Past staff, post-docs, and grad students
Brook Jensen – PhD candidate (graduated 2024)
Brook explores the phenotypic trade-offs of insecticide (knock down) resistance within Aedes aegypti through resistance profiling (using topical bioassay application) and life history trait measurements. Additionally, she is comparing the efficacy of resistance management strategies (i.e., low-dose and high-dose-refugee vs. no dose and high-dose) across multiple generations. Collectively, her work can be used to improve insecticide resistance modeling and inform future resistance management strategies.
Xyonane Segovia – PhD candidate (graduated 2024)
Xyonane investigates the complex dynamics of malaria infections through an ecological lens. She aims to understand these ecological interactions within malaria infections as this knowledge could lead to effective strategies to manage antimalarial resistance. She examines within host parasite dynamics (through animal model data), explores the impacts of competition (through in vitro work), and elucidates the significance of a fitness cost (through extensive literature research).
Sarah Rydberg – Research specialist
Sarah supervises day-to-day activity in the mosquito insectary facility and molecular laboratory. She is an Arizona State University undergraduate alumni currently also working on her Masters degree. Sarah spends most of her time rearing numerous laboratory strains of Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus for ongoing research, training and assisting personnel, and performing other essential managerial tasks in-lab. Her current MSc research aims to examine whether insecticide resistance reversal in Aedes aegypti can be observed in the absence of insecticide pressure.
Rachel Althoff – MSc student (graduated 2022)
Rachel is an insect fanatic through and through and self-proclaimed to have taken care of beetles in her barbie house as a kid. Her MSc work focused on comparing CDC bottle assays, WHO tube tests and topical application bioassays and she graduated with an impressive two peer-reviewed publications from the lab.
Rebecca Smith Aguasca Laboratory manager
Rebecca is the savior of the lab. She has been the one doing all the heavy lifting of getting us started at ASU. Rebecca is responsible for the day-to-day smooth sailing of the lab, performs a large variety of molecular assays in the lab and in addition is heading a project on novel antimalarial resistance surveillance tools.
Smita Das Post-doc (co-supervised by Krijn Paaijmans)
Smita holds the dubious honor of first post-doc in the Huijben lab. She is a field work veteran. Smita currently works on the heterogeneity of insecticide resistance in mosquitoes in southern Mozambique.
Alice Namias
MSc student – Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris
Alice has been the lab’s pioneer in exploring our new field site in Guyana. In her master project she is working on insecticide resistance surveillance in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Georgetown, Guyana as well as analyzing the meaning of insecticide bioassays for intervention programs. Currently doing her PhD in Montpellier!
Mara Maquina Junior entomologist, CISM
Mara is our insecticide resistance expert overseas. She carries out all insecticide resistance bioassays for mosquitoes from both Magude and Manhiça districts (southern Mozambique), using WHO tube assays and the CDC bottle assays.