VectorByte
A 5-year NSF Division of Biological Infrastructure grant, awarded to Leah R. Johnson (Virginia Tech), Sadie J. Ryan (University of Florida), and myself in collaboration with Samraat Pawar (Imperial College London), that launched in August 2020.
The main goals of this project are to build a centralized open access data platform called VectorByte for biological trait (VecTraits) and abundance data (VecDyn); and to provide open access tools to explore and use the data, plus training and workshops, to ensure the initiative reaches a wide range of researchers and practitioners. VectorByte also hosts the Vector Data Ecosystem, our attempt to make a living catalogue of where vector data is available.
Visit the VectorByte home page at VectorByte.org
Vector population dynamics across the United States
Understanding the population dynamics of American mosquitoes at a continental scale requires time series data on mosquito abundance at different sites. This project seeks to collect raw trap count data from many different contributors (e.g. mosquito abatement districts), collate it in a public database, and make it available for visualization and download via an open access web interface. In this way, a little data from many diverse contributors can add up to a comprehensive resource for all. Our hope is to find data from each of the ~100 North American EPA level III co-regions.
More details can be found here.
Past Projects and Highlights
VEuPathDB / VectorBase
The Eukaryotic Pathogen, Vector and Host Informatics Resource (VEuPathDB) was one of two Bioinformatics Resource Centers (BRCs) funded by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The BRC program was initiated in 2004 to provide public access to computational platforms and analysis tools enabling collection, management, integration and mining of genomic information and other large-scale datasets relevant to infectious disease pathogens, including their interaction with mammalian hosts and invertebrate vectors of disease.
I was on the VEuPathDB/VectorBase team from 2017-2024 and served as a data curator and outreach team (user support/training) member.
VectorBase, is a component site of VEuPathDB.
An. gambiae complex seasonality profiling
With generous funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health – VectorBase and the CSIRO Data61 Ecological and Environmental Risk Assessment (DEERA) collated data to make a public FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) spatio-temporal database for the abundance of dominant malaria vectors across Africa. The data was initially used to facilitate an Anopheles gambiae gene drive risk assessment.
Learning tours and experiences with the Pan-African Mosquito Control Association to see US-style mosquito control
American Mosquito Abatement Tours for African Mosquito Scientists