Dr. Stephanie Richards receives, as a co-investigator, a grant funding through the FY 2019 Stage I University of North Carolina (UNC) Inter-institutional Planning Grant Award for $10,000. This is a collaboration between Western Carolina University (WCU)(as Principal Investigator), East Carolina University (ECU), and NC State University (NCSU).  The project titled “Establishing a Statewide Public Health Entomology Research Consortium: Addressing National Entomological Surveillance Needs by Developing Novel Diagnostic Methods through Transdisciplinary Collaborations” aims to assist in the development of rapid diagnostic methods for mosquito control and surveillance. The 3 universities will be collaborating to develop a 2-year research and programmatic plan to: 1) generate additional preliminary data and proof of concept evidence, and 2) identify and apply for extramural large-scale funding.

Dr. Richards and her team are working with WCU and NCSU to evaluate the use of rapid spectroscopic analysis to identify and characterize mosquitoes (e.g., species identification, insecticide susceptibility, and potentially virus infection status) by spectroscopic methods. As part of this planning grant, they will pursue extramural funding to support the development of spectroscopic mosquito identification and insecticide susceptibility testing methods. Specifically, they plan to develop a major proposal to the National Science Foundation (ex. PD 09-6880: Chemical Measurement and Imaging) in 2019, and focused (smaller) proposals to the American Mosquito Control Research Fund and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.