Congratulations, Dr. Meredith Anderson, DVM & PhD!
The Schubot Center for Avian Health is very happy to congratulate Dr. Meredith Anderson, DVM, for the successful completion of her Ph.D. Meredith’s dissertation, “Neonicotinoid Pesticide Exposure and Its Relationship to Avian Ecology, Migration Phenology, and Zoonotic Pathogen Dynamics,” focused on a very important question: how environmental pesticide exposure can affect wild birds, their migration, their immune responses, and their interactions with pathogens.
During her time as a Schubot Center graduate student, Meredith’s research helped us better understand neonicotinoid exposure in wild bird communities, including how this exposure changes across seasons and how it may influence avian health and disease dynamics. Her work connects strongly with the One Health mission, linking the health of birds, ecosystems, and human communities. Meredith’s research was also supported through important collaborations, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory Collaborative Research Program, where she and Dr. Sarah Hamer (her PhD advisor) studied neonicotinoid exposure in wild bird communities and its possible effects on pathogen resistance, tolerance, and transmission.
Meredith was also a very active and enthusiastic part of Schubot’s outreach efforts. She especially enjoyed helping students understand the many ways veterinarians can work with avian species — in clinics, research laboratories, and also in the field. Through Schubot outreach events, Meredith shared the methods behind her Ph.D. research with middle school and high school students, as well as Girl Scout troops, helping young people connect real scientific questions with hands-on research methods. In this way, she inspired little — and not so little — girls to imagine themselves following careers in science, veterinary medicine, wildlife health, and conservation.
Her next chapter will take her to the Michigan State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, where she will begin a postdoctoral position as an Association of Public Health Laboratories–CDC Fellow. There, she will continue her research path by designing assays and measuring neonicotinoids in nontraditional wildlife samples.
Congratulations, Meredith — we are so proud of you, very grateful for all you shared with the Schubot Center, and so happy to celebrate you now as a doctor TWICE over!
