Newswise — Stephen Higgs, an infectious disease expert and the director of Kansas State University's Biosecurity Research Institute, is available to comment on the recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. The report indicates that diseases transmitted by mosquito, tick and flea bites have more than tripled in the U.S. since 2004.
Higgs, whose particular research interests are mosquito-virus-vertebrate interactions, is an expert in vector biology, immunology, arthropod-borne infectious diseases and vaccine development. He has researched important mosquito-borne diseases such as chikungunya, Sindbis, O’nyong-nyong, West Nile, yellow fever and Zika viruses.
At the Biosecurity Research Institute, Higgs develops research programs on diseases that affect the global food supply, including those affecting humans, livestock and plants as well as food-borne pathogens. The institute is a secure biosafety level-3 and biosafety level-3 ag facility.
Higgs is a past-president of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He also serves as Kansas State University's associate vice president for research and is a university distinguished professor in the department of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
He has published more than 175 peer-reviewed papers and 16 book chapters and is a fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and the Royal Entomological Society. He also is editor-in-chief of the international journal Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases.
Higgs earned a doctorate in parasitology from Reading University in the United Kingdom and a bachelor of science with honors in zoology from King's College in London. He was involved in training and research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and at the Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology, Oxford, in the United Kingdom before coming to the U.S. in 1991.
More information is available at http://www.bri.k-state.edu/biosketches/higgs-stephen.html
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