Luke Brendel
He/Him
I am gay and I am a vector biologist.//
I always knew that I wanted to do *something* in the world of science. I’m not sure I really knew that “scientist” was a job title that I could have until I started working at an environmental education facility in high school – finding out about grad school and getting paid to take a deep dive into a topic that you love changed everything.
I went on to get my B.Sc. in Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, where I took courses on a very wide breadth of information, and many small obsessions came and went. I volunteered in a few labs, talked to a whole bunch of grad students and postdocs, and ended up taking a summer student job with a forest and restoration ecology lab- this got me excited to actually work in science, but found that I had some interests in other areas. This led me to taking entomology classes, and found a professor that I really bonded with. Her work focused mostly within using molecular methods, which was a big jump, conceptually, but I was very keen to continue on. She had seen the potential in me, and took a chance to recommend me as a graduate student to a past colleague of hers.
There was a bit of a slight detour in my trajectory, going from working as a field technician and doing vegetation surveys, to what I ended up doing afterward. I ended up moving a few states away to join a medical entomology lab at the University of Florida. There, I got my hands dirty as a vector ecologist. I conducted surveillance of mosquitoes and ticks throughout my time doing my Masters, and my thesis focused on the landscape epidemiology of mosquitoes known to vector West Nile Virus, as well as looking into the prevalence of a known viral endosymbiont. I learned that I definitely wanted to stay in the world of scientific research, but felt like I needed a little bit of a change.
This all leads to now, where I have again moved just a few states away- a quick skip and a hop over to Kansas. I am currently working for the USDA, studying the relationships between house flies and bacterial pathogens, and how they impact livestock and agricultural systems. I think back to little gay high school Luke, and wondering how much of what I do now would excite and surprise him. I really hope that I will continue to do my past self proud.