How do microbes travel? How long can bacteria and viruses survive on surfaces? And how likely are they to infect other people?
Frontline health workers have long been asking these questions in an effort to keep themselves and their patients safe. But the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a very public debate and discussion around how microbes move and survive: do we really need to wear masks? (Yes.) Is it necessary to wipe down grocery bags with bleach? (Probably not.) With these topics fueling a global conversation, quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) specialists like Dr. Amanda Wilson find themselves in an unusually bright spotlight.
Amanda has been studying microbial risk since 2016, when she began her master’s in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Arizona. Her QMRA specialisation means she uses mathematical models to estimate and learn about infection risks in indoor environments.
Part of Amanda’s research: creating simulated fomite squares for a fomite-to-fingertip microbial transfer efficiency study.
When she’s not in the lab, Amanda may be found working on one of her artistic hobbies, which include painting, jewelry-making, and writing poetry. Above: the results of some of Amanda’s painting breaks in Salt Lake City.
Much of her work has focused on determining risks in healthcare settings, examining how very basic elements of facility infrastructure and practice may lead to infection risks. How likely is a wheelchair — particularly one that is hastily reused without being disinfected between patients — to spread pathogens through a hospital? And can the use of ultraviolet lights in ambulances stem the spread of resistant staph infections? These are just some of the questions Amanda’s research has sought to answer.
With four years of QMRA experience under her belt by the time the pandemic hit, Amanda was particularly well placed to understand its risks. Over the last year — first while she was finishing her PhD at the University of Arizona, and later as a post-doc at the University of Utah — she’s written four papers on coronavirus infection risk. These have included modelling self-contamination risks for healthcare workers and potential risk reductions through surface decontamination.
Amanda is an Arizona native, and stayed in the state for much of her academic career. After completing her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science at the University of Arizona, she stayed in the department for both her master’s and PhD. But while her
CV may present her as a single-minded scientist, Amanda also has an artistic resume spanning jewelry-making, music, painting, poetry, pottery-making, and sketching.
“I find that every art form brings out a different part of your personality or your mind,” she tells us. “I like exploring and dabbling in a lot of different things to process my environment and explore my curiosity in a less structured way than science requires.”
Her focus on QMRA is a reflection of this kind of interdisciplinary thinking. Risk assessment is an intersection of sorts, bringing several “hard science” disciplines like microbiology, mathematics, and statistics in touch with the less predictable behavioral sciences. But choosing such a specific area of study means finding guidance and mentorship hasn’t always been easy — there aren’t many environmental health experts with an extensive infectious disease mathematical modelling background, for example. Amanda has used ResearchGate to make the types of connections she otherwise had trouble finding offline.
“I'll find a paper I really like and I'll look at the senior author on that paper, look at their lab members and kind of start looking at, okay, who are they connected with?” she says. “And eventually, you'll find out how many nodes away that person is from your lab group, and they'll start making connections about future collaboration.”
Her most important connection over the platform came in 2019, when Dr. Marco-Felipe King sent her a message on ResearchGate.
“I was really looking for a mentor in mathematical modeling around infectious diseases,” she says. “And I was really starting to feel anxious, wondering how I’d find somebody to teach me this new skill set. It was in that week that he reached out over ResearchGate.”
At the time, Marco was a post-doc based in Leeds, U.K., but he was already on Amanda’s radar — she had already read his work while completing her master’s, and considered his publications to be the “gold standard” for mathematical infectious disease modelling.
“I kept thinking about his paper...if only I could do that, if only I could accomplish something on that level.” Amanda says. “So when he reached out, I was really excited.”
When Amanda’s advisor suggested she visit Marco’s lab to learn from him directly, Amanda jumped at the chance. Within a month, she was on a flight to England. Those three weeks in Leeds were just the beginning of a collaboration that’s turned out to be nothing short of prolific: since mid-2019, Amanda and Marco have published seven papers, and have seven more in preparation or under review.
Just as their research has progressed together, so have their academic careers: Marco is now a lecturer at the University of Leeds and Amanda will be returning to the University of Arizona in July 2021, this time as an assistant professor. But even though they’ll both be busy in the lecture hall, the heart of their work will stay in the lab. As soon as conditions are safe for her to visit the U.K. again, Amanda will be flying there for additional research funded by a Royal Society grant.
Collaborations like this one, Amanda says, are central to helping her gain the knowledge she needs to forge her own career path.
“Who do I want to become in the future?” she asks. “What skill sets do I want to gain? And how do I find mentors to support that new vision?”
