Dennis Kyle, PhD, professor of global health, looks through a portal door of the new insectary, which will soon house malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Most days you can’t just walk into the laboratories where members of the College of Public Health’s Global Health Infectious Disease Research (GHIDR) team do their work, seeking to unravel the secrets of viral and parasitic infectious diseases transmitted by insects. But, July 28, GHIDR welcomed visitors for tours of the team’s offices and state-of-the-art laboratories, covering nearly 15,000 square feet of space in the Interdisciplinary Research Building at USF’s Research Park.

The team’s faculty core is comprised of five scientists who together have accumulated more than 120 years of expertise in global infectious diseases research — John Adams, PhD; Dennis Kyle, PhD; Wil Milhous, PhD; Thomas Unnasch, PhD; and Alberto van Olphen, PhD, DVM. They collaborate with the neighboring USF Center for Biological Defense and the Florida Department of Bureau of Laboratories, among others.

The tour stopped outside the newly commissioned, top-security BSL-3 Lab, for a brief glimpse in the window. But, visitors did get to go inside the recently completed Vector-Borne Pathogen Laboratory, or insectary, where the hot, humid air will soon welcome swarms of carefully contained, blood-sucking mosquitoes that transmit the malaria parasite.

Read more about the GHIDR Team…

Photo Gallery

– Newsbrief by Anne DeLotto Baier/USF Health Communications
– Photos by Eric Younghans/USF Health Media Center