Laura Budd

Laura is a veterinarian and doctoral candidate in Veterinary Medical Sciences, with a specialization in Wildlife Health and Ecology, at the University of Calgary. She earned her DVM at the University of California, Davis and was in clinical practice for several years before returning to research. Laura is originally from Vermont, USA but has contributed to wildlife health and ecology research as well as One Health outreach in North and Central America as well as East Africa. Broadly, she is interested in the ecological drivers of disease transmission at the human-livestock-wildlife interface, particularly how human land-use and management decisions shape these dynamics. Her PhD research investigates how different types of agricultural land-use influence rodent population ecology and viral dynamics in Alberta, contributing to our understanding of spillover risk in anthropogenically-modified habitats.