Dr Dana Nayduch

Dr. Dana Nayduch is a Research Molecular Biologist with the Arthropod-Borne Animal Diseases Research Unit at USDA-ARS. Her research over the past two decades has mainly focused on the microbial ecology and molecular function of dipteran pests, with particular focus on the role of the innate immune system in fly-microbe interactions. She received her B.S. in Animal Science from Rutgers University and Ph.D. in Zoology from Clemson University, where she studied house flies as vectors for pathogenic bacteria. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, where she worked on molecular-genetic studies of tsetse flies. In 2004 she joined Georgia Southern University as an Assistant Professor of Biology and was promoted and tenured in 2009. At GSU she received NIH-R15 funding to study house fly-microbe molecular interactions.

Dr. Nayduch joined USDA-ARS in August 2011, where she works on molecular and microbiological studies of Culicoides midges and house flies. Her team helped generate the first big data resources for C. sonorensis, co-founding the Culicoides Genomics and Transcriptomics Alliance. She cooperates with several laboratories on comparative transcriptomic and microbiomic studies of dipteran pests of livestock and humans. Her expertise in fly-microbe interactions is reflected in her participation in international committees, interviews, invited symposia and lectures, book chapters and outreach. She is an active member of the Entomological Society of America, serving on the editorial board for the Journal of Medical Entomology and as subject editor for Annals of the ESA. She is currently the Vice President-Elect for the Medical, Urban and Veterinary entomology section of ESA and will continue in this leadership role through to section President.