My final project was on Lyme Disease, conducted with a group of 3 of my classmates: Alexander Coster, Chelsey Cu and Lakshmi Soundarapandian.

We looked at historic and current distributions on lyme disease cases in the northeastern United States and used the data to extrapolate future distributions of lyme disease in view of climate change. We tested 3 models using maxent to determine which variables are the most important in determining tick habitat and survival, from which we inferred lyme disease distribution. We then used the most significant variables to construct a range of future distribution using predicted environmental and biological data. A more in depth description of our study can be accessed on the project blog here or a brief powerpoint of the study is available here.