Dr. Kishana Y. Taylor completed her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences at The University of Georgia with a focus on disease ecology. She received a B.S. in animal science from the University of Delaware and an M.S. in public health microbiology and emerging infectious disease (PHMEID). Kishana seeks to combine her knowledge from all areas of her education by taking an interdisciplinary approach to investigating zoonotic disease and arboviruses. Kishana’s doctoral project focused on creating an experimental laboratory animal transmission model for epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus, a vector-borne virus that infects ruminants. Her current research focuses on the rate of reassortment between influenza viruses during co-infection and how this influences influenza evolution and she will soon be moving on to investigating the role of macrophages in the development of COVID-19 upon SARS-CoV2 infection. Her overall interests include viral evolution, ecology, and molecular epidemiology, especially arboviruses, as well as interactions between both the virus and the host and the virus and the vector. Zoonotic disease and viral discovery are other topics of interest. Kishana will be on the job market in 2021.