Parasitic Mind Control: Who's Really in Command? | Maggie Bartlett & Madalyn McFarland | TEDxUNO

Did you know that one in three people have a brain parasite? TEDxUNO speakers Maggie Bartlett and Madalyn McFarland share all about how this came to be, as well as possible solutions.


Maggie Bartlett is a first year Immunology, Pathology and Infectious Disease doctoral student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha Medical Center (UNMC) and was selected as the Chancellor’s Outstanding Incoming Ph.D. Student. She is a UNO alumni with a Bachelor’s of Science in Biotechnology where she was an INBRE scholar.

During her time at UNO, her focus was development and testing of novel Toxoplasma gondii vaccines. Maggie will be the first Ph.D. candidate to pursue her dissertation at the United States Army Medical Research Institute for infectious diseases (USAMRIID) through a new pipeline program with UNMC. Her focus will be host-response immunomics, specifically of the immune repertoire to filoviruses, alpha viruses, and corresponding vaccines.

Madalyn McFarland is a second year master’s degree student in biology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. After earning her bachelor's degree at UNO in biotechnology, she began her thesis work in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Davis, on the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Her work focuses on the development of experimental compounds into novel antiparasitic drug treatments.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx