The Team.
Dr. Maureen M. Laroche (PI)

Dr. Laroche is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at UTMB and adjunct faculty in the department of Global Health and Emerging Diseases. 
She's a French Medical Entomologist and Clinical Bacteriologist from Martinique (French Caribbean). Her research focuses on the ecology and management of vector-borne bacterial pathogens, especially in vulnerable populations.
She holds a BSc in clinical bacteriology, a MSc in Infectious Diseases (medical entomology/bacteriology) and a PhD in Infectious Diseases (medical entomology). 

During her PhD, she worked on the development of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry databases for the identification of arthropod vector species, their associated bacterial pathogens and their blood meals, as well as other entomological endpoints. She also described new vector/bacteria associations and new bacteria species associated with vectors.

She now investigates the burden and characteristics of vector-borne bacteria associated with vulnerable populations in tropical areas. She also studies the transmission dynamics of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in the Americas.

​Dr. Laroche is particularly passionate about Global Health, decolonizing science, as well as other initiatives aimed at reducing inequities in Academia.

Lab members

Tanguy Tchifteyan
​Research Associate

Tanguy is a Research Associate and currently acts as our lab manager. His background is in cancer research. He received training in animal models, including mouse and Drosophila.
He is involved in most of the projects conducted in the lab and provides support for microbiology and molecular biology assays.

Gladys Gazelle
​Research Technician

Gladys is a Research Technician with experience in the development of MALDI-TOF MS databases for vector biology. She is a trained microbiologist with experience in Drosophila models.
Gladys is in charge of maintaining our arthropod colonies. She is also the main technician supporting our USDA grant focused on the development of MALDI databases for the surveillance of ticks and tick-borne diseases.

Jessica Ngo
​​​Medical Student

Jessica is a medical student working on the role of bed bugs as potential vectors of Kaeng Khoi virus.
Jessica joined the lab through the T35 program of the Microbiology & Immunology Department at UTMB in 2022. She is now finalizing her project and the resulting manuscript.

Jahkim Garos, MD
​​D43 trainee

Jahkim is a resident in Infectious Diseases in the Internal Medicine department of Jos University teaching hospital, Nigeria. She is a West African Center for Emerging Infectious Disease (WAC-EID) mentee. Her project focuses on the ecology and clinical manifestations of tick-borne relapsing fevers in Nigeria. In particular, she studies zoonotic cycles of relapsing fever borreliae in human, animal and arthropod samples.

Winnie Contreras, DVM
PhD Student

Winnie is enrolled as a PhD student in epidemiology at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH), Lima. Her interests are in the epidemiology and enzootic ecology of infectious diseases transmitted by ectoparasites. Her previous research is grounded in a One Health approach, focusing on the detection of Babesia and molecular characterization of Rickettsia in humans, rodents and ticks from Andean communities of the Peruvian coast. Dr. Contreras has actively contributed to a project investigating the impact of land use changes on vector-borne disease transmission, led by researchers at Stanford University and UPCH, and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Additionally, she has played a pivotal role in the development of innovative diagnostic techniques and cost-effective collection strategies for biological samples from humans, wildlife, rodents, and mosquitoes in the Peruvian Amazon. Dr. Contreras harbors a keen interest in furthering her research trajectory, particularly exploring the nexus between animals, the environment, and the transmission dynamics of ectoparasite-borne diseases in resource-constrained settings.

Giuseppe Troncoso Palacio
BSc student

Giuseppe recently joined the team as a Research Associate, with the goal of starting his PhD in 2025. Throughout his academic journey at Pontifical Javeriana University in Colombia, he has delved deeply into microbiology, with a focus on vector-borne diseases. His multidisciplinary training has spanned various sectors, including food, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, environment, and clinical contexts. His research at Pontifical Javeriana University focused on the study of viruses, parasites and bacteria associated with emerging infectious diseases, which allowed him to gain knowledge on the ecology and epidemiology of vectors and reservoirs of vector-borne pathogens. His bachelor’s thesis focused on evaluating the efficacy of BG-Sentinel traps for monitoring Aedes mosquitoes in San Joaquín, La Mesa, Colombia. He gained knowledge on the neurophysiology of Aedes mosquitoes, substances and volatiles with potential in mosquito attraction, and how these can be used for entomological surveillance and to plan surveillance projects. He will be working on the ecology and pathogenesis of neglected bacteria such as bartonellae and ​R. prowazekii.

Cusi Ferradas Castillo, DVM MPH PhD
Post Doctoral Fellow

Cusi obtained her DVM in Peru, her MPH from Johns Hopkins University and her PhD in Epidemiology from UC Davis. Cusi’s previous research focused on improving the diagnosis of toxoplasmosis, as well as studying the risk factors for multi-drug resistant staphylococcus carriage among domestic animals. While pursuing her MPH, Cusi was an intern at the Department of Zoonotic and Vector-Borne Diseases at the Maryland Department of Health. There, she became aware of the high burden of ectoparasite-borne diseases among humans and animals and decided to address this understudied topic in Peru. Cusi has been working on ectoparasite-borne diseases since 2019, when she obtained the GloCal Health Fellowship with the project “The role of domestic animals and rodents in the ecology and epidemiology of rickettsias in the Peruvian Amazon basin.” For her doctoral thesis, she studied the spatial distribution of genetic lineages of the brown dog tick (Rhipicephalus sanguineus) in Peru and the human, dog, and environmentally related risk factors for Ehrlichia canis infection in the Peruvian Amazon basin.
She is now working on various projects related to Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices in regard to tick-borne diseases, but also studying animal reservoirs of zoonotic bacterial pathogens in Peru.
Cusi’s long-term goal is to establish a research group in ectoparasite-borne diseases in Peru to more accurately diagnose these diseases and establish effective preventive and control measures.
Phone number: +51 954 118 932

Amber Holley, MSc
PhD student

Amber is a UTMB Experimental Pathology graduate student that recently joined the lab. She obtained her M.S. from Valdosta State University where her research focused on determining the role of Anopheles quadrimaculatus s.l. mosquitoes in canine heartworm transmission, and the environmental factors that influence West Nile virus transmission. Her research interests include vector-pathogen and host-pathogen interactions. Her current project focuses on the development of surveillance tools for vector-borne diseases. More specifically, she is currently developing databases for the simultaneous identification of vectors and detection of pathogens using MALDI-TOF MS.

Oliver Bocanegra
Research Associate

Oliver is a new RA at UTMB who has been working with us remotely for a year during his MSc. As a biologist trained in the Peruvian Amazon, his previous research focused on improving molecular detection techniques for malaria using saliva samples, standardizing loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) for rapid malaria diagnosis and surveillance of multidrug resistance genes of Plasmodium vivax, all carried out in the Peruvian Amazon. Oliver is immersed in investigating the eco-epidemiology of diseases transmitted by ectoparasites, focusing particularly on rickettsioses. His current project seeks to discern potential associations between the prevalence rates of rickettsioses and changes in forest cover within ecotones in the Peruvian Amazon. In the long term, Oliver aspires to make significant contributions to our understanding of the complex interaction between environmental factors, ectoparasites, and the transmission of diseases. His overarching goal is to contribute scientific knowledge in the field of epidemiology of ectoparasite-borne diseases and public health, with a special emphasis on addressing the challenges faced by the most vulnerable geographic areas burdened with vector-borne diseases, such as the Peruvian Amazon. Oliver will now work on the (re)emergence and management of Q fever in rural areas.