Rachel Alexander, has received the George Barthalmus Undergraduate Research Award from Office of Undergraduate Research at NC State.

Avian Influenza (H5N1) has recently emerged in North America’s wildlife, chickens, cows, and farmworkers. Much of the existing literature centers around understanding the transmission of this virus by studying a single variable’s effect on transmission.  Ms. Alexander posits that transmission is the result of multiple variables. Her research will integrate three distinct variables into a time-series and geospatial analysis to answer the question: how do environmental variables, like seasonal temperature, migratory bird timing, and precipitation patterns affect the geographic distribution and timing of H5N1 cross-species transmission?