Congratulations to Paul Travers on His NSF IRES Tanzania Offer

I am delighted to share some wonderful news from our lab. Paul Travers has received an offer to join the NSF International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) Tanzania Program, part of the Entomological Happenings project.

This is an exciting and unusual project. It brings together entomologists, architects, social scientists, public health specialists, engineers, and artists from around the world and from the host countries to model new strategies for mosquito control in Brazil and Tanzania. The motivation is urgent: climate change, population growth, rapid urbanization, and insecticide resistance are expanding the range and resilience of disease-carrying mosquitoes while weakening conventional control tools. Rather than relying on chemistry alone, the team looks at how homes and fast-growing urban neighborhoods can be co-designed with the communities who live in them.

The program is led in part by my UNC Charlotte colleagues Dr. Liz McCormick of the College of Arts + Architecture and Dr. Brett Tempest of Civil and Environmental Engineering, working alongside partners at the University of Dar es Salaam, Ifakara Health Institute, and the University of Oxford. entomologicalhappeningsentomologicalhappenings

Paul has earned this. He brings curiosity, discipline, and a genuine commitment to research every day in the Performance Materials Laboratory, and it was my pleasure to serve as one of his references. Projects like this one shape young researchers in ways a classroom cannot. Working across disciplines and cultures, and seeing engineering decisions play out in real communities facing real public health challenges, builds the kind of professional judgment that lasts a career.

I am proud of Paul and excited to see what he learns and contributes in Tanzania. Please join me in congratulating him.