Turner Lab Personnel
Principal Investigator
Wendy Turner
Research Biologist, U.S. Geological Survey
Unit Leader, Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit
Research Professor, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Google Scholar profile
Researchgate profile
Current Research Group Members
Marie Gilbertson, Ph.D., D.V.M.
Scientist II, UW–Madison
Marie is interested in identifying the underlying drivers of transmission in free-ranging wildlife. During her PhD, Marie studied transmission dynamics of retroviruses in the endangered Florida panther. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, drawing from bioinformatics, movement ecology, disease ecology, and veterinary medicine, and she has extensive experience in network and computational modeling. As a scientist in the Turner lab, Marie is studying deer movement ecology and chronic wasting disease transmission.
Website: https://marieljgilbertson.weebly.com/
Steven Winter
Postdoctoral Researcher, UW–Madison
Steven is a disease ecologist interested in emerging diseases that affect wildlife conservation. His past work has primarily focused on diseases of ungulates and using methods from spatial epidemiology and landscape ecology. During his PhD, he studied a new disease of free-ranging elk in northwestern US called treponeme-associated hoof disease (also known as elk hoof disease). As a Postdoctoral Scientist in the Turner lab, he will be collaborating with partners at the USGS National Wildlife Health Center to study ecological drivers of white-nose syndrome in North American bats and disease surveillance systems.
Aaron Groves
M.S. student, UW–Madison Wildlife Ecology program
Aaron is developing a project on coyote and bobcat movement ecology, predation/scavenging of white-tailed deer, and effects on chronic wasting disease spread.
Md Nurul Islam, D.V.M., M.S.
Ph.D. student, UW–Madison Wildlife Ecology program
Nurul is interested in investigating white-tailed deer behaviors relevant to the transmission of chronic wasting disease (CWD). His work will be focused on video data of deer behaviors, including video camera traps that monitor deer behavior at potential environmental reservoirs and GPS collars fitted with video cameras that monitor deer behaviors and contacts on the landscape.
Michael Menon
Ph.D. Student co-advised with Professor Tim Van Deelen, UW–Madison Wildlife Ecology program
Elijah Smith
Ph.D. Student, UW–Madison Comparative Biomedical Sciences program
Elijah is studying chronic wasting disease (CWD) prions and their biochemical and environmental interactions. He is interested in how biochemical properties of disease agents correlate with disease development in hosts and the ecology of the disease transmission. He will apply various molecular and biochemical techniques including prion detection assays like RT-QuIC to characterize the prion molecule. His work will explore how the conformation of prion molecules affects the transmission of CWD, clinical progression, and environmental degradation.
Kimberlie Vera
Ph.D. candidate, UW–Madison Wildlife Ecology program
Kimberlie is interested in using quantitative ecology methods to investigate how Bacillus anthracis interacts with its herbivorous hosts in two different ecosystems with varying anthrax outbreak dynamics, Etosha National Park, Namibia and Kruger National Park, South Africa.