Rebecca Borchering
Graduate Student
Co-advised with Dr. Scott McKinley
Department of Mathematics
Phone: (352) 294-2385
Email: rborchering [at] ufl.edu
Degrees
BS - Arizona State University, 2007
Background and Research Interests
Rebecca became interested in mathematical biology when she worked on modeling the spread of rabies in bats and skunks in Texas. She is now an IGERT Fellow and a PhD candidate in the mathematics department at the University of Florida, where she is co-advised by Dr. Scott McKinley and Dr. Juliet Pulliam. She works with Dr. Pulliam on modeling the seasonal dynamics of rabies in raccoon, skunk, and fox populations.
For this project, Rebecca is collaborating with researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States Department of Agriculture, to compare model simulations with existing data. She hopes to identify the most likely driver(s) of the temporal distribution of rabies outbreaks. Her future goals include understanding the mechanisms that produce spatial patterns in rabies dynamics and investigating how different animal movement models influence predictions about the spread of infectious diseases in wildlife populations.