Kaylee Herzog, PhD

I became a postdoctoral research association in the Fauver Lab in June 2022. I am a parasitologist and evolutionary biologist by training. My hometown is Albany, NY, and I first began researching parasites as an undergraduate student working with Dr. Florian Reyda at SUNY Oneonta. Under the mentorship of Dr. Reyda, I studied parasites of freshwater bony fishes and marine tapeworms of sharks and rays. After graduating with a B.S. in 2014, I went on to pursue graduate studies under the mentorship of Dr. Kirsten Jensen at the University of Kansas (KU). While at KU, I completed both a master’s degree (2016) and a Ph.D. (2022) in evolutionary biology. I also gained curatorial experience working with the Invertebrate Zoology collection at KU’s Biodiversity Institute. My master’s work examined the effect of host size and age on tapeworm species composition within a stingray host from the Indo-Pacific region. My doctoral work focused on the population genomics, systematics, and phylogenomics of the shark and ray tapeworm order Trypanorhyncha. During my tenure as a doctoral student, I was awarded a Madison & Lila Self Graduate Fellowship–an interdisciplinary merit-based program which funded my education and contributed to the development of my leadership skillset. Since joining the Fauver Lab, my main research focus has been to leverage next-generation genomic sequencing data to study the infection dynamics of parasitic nematodes. I have also been fortunate to be a part of a large-scale genomic surveillance program for SARS-CoV-2 in partnership with the Yale School of Public Health and the National Basketball Association.