Andrea Swei
My research interests are disease and population ecology. I study the underlying disease ecology that determine disease distribution and abundance and how these factors affect human public health. I use a combination of field and laboratory analysis to inform mathematical models to make predictions about when and where diseases are likely to change or emerge.
Research interests
My dissertation research focused on Lyme disease ecology, a vector-born zoonotic disease that is endemic to the United States, Europe and Asia. For the past 4 years I have investigated the relationship between the prevalence of Lyme disease and the impacts of a devastating forest pathogen, Sudden oak death (SOD). SOD is killing scores of oak trees in California’s coastal oak woodlands and changing the habitat, resource base, and abiotic conditions for vertebrate reservoirs of the disease-causing bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi. Tick hosts such as mice (Peromyscus spp.) and woodrats (Neotoma fuscipes), as well as disease vector, the western black-legged tick, Ixodes pacificus are all potentially impacted by SOD.
Contact me
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Integrative Biology
3060 VLSB
Berkeley, CA 94720
w: (510) 643-5782
f: (510) 643-6264
Labs I belong to:
Sousa lab at UC Berkeley
Briggs lab at UC Santa Barbara
coming soon
