College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Fisheries and Wildlife

Major Advisor:

Sonja Christensen

Biography:

Kristen earned her B.A. in biology and environmental science from Westminster College. Her undergraduate research focused on researching and taxonomically identifying early mammal oreodont and entelodont fossil specimens. After graduation, she spent some time working as a wildlife health technician for the Missouri department of Conservation assisting in chronic wasting disease (CWD) sampling, epizootic hemorrhagic disease sampling (HD) and other wildlife health related issues. She then returned to school in 2020 to get her master’s degree in Natural resources with an emphasis in fisheries and wildlife at the University of Missouri. Her research focused on zoonotic bacterial diseases and how the severity of these diseases impacted individual host species. Afterwards she spent a year as a toxicology research assistant at the University of Missouri’s veterinary diagnostic lab before once again returning to school in 2024 to earn her doctorate. Her current research is still in the early stages but will focus on modeling HD outbreaks in the great plains and eastern United States. Broadly, Kristen is interested in conservation biology, with special interests in wildlife disease management, One Health concepts, and disease epidemiology.