Alex Flevarakis is a junior undergraduate majoring in Wildlife Conservation at Virginia Tech. Her previous research was with Dr. Mike Ellerbrock involving the assessing economic impacts of ecotourism in the Roanoke River Basin where she was responsible for statistical evaluations and data analysis. She joined the Hopkins lab as a volunteer research assistant in the Spring of 2015. While working on a project investigating the effects of early developmental conditions on a Zebra Finch colony offspring phenotype, Alex has developed skills in animal husbandry and handling, preparing blood smears, data collection and input, and dissecting unhatched eggs to determine embryonic developmental stages. She hopes to continue to evolve and expand her research experiences by developing an independent research project in the future.
Alex worked at Southern Illinois University’s REU in Convergence Ecology funded by the National Science Foundation during the Summer of 2015. Alex also has an internship for Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 with the Office of Energy and Sustainability at Virginia Tech on the Energy Team responsible for promotion of positive energy usage, overseeing the implementation of the VTCAC Resolution and the accompanying Sustainability Plan, and coordinating programs for campus sustainability. She is interested in disease ecology with an emphasis on molecular biology and immunology. She intends to attend graduate school to obtain a PhD in disease ecology after graduating from Virginia Tech.
