Ms.Allison Neal - Department of Biology Graduate Student, UVM - Biographical Sketch


Allison Neal is a fourth year graduate student in the Department of Biology at the University of Vermont working in the lab of Dr. Joseph Schall. Her research focuses on the sex ratio of malaria parasites, with empirical work on the lizard malaria parasite Plasmodium mexicanum. She received a Green and Gold Scholarship for full undergraduate tuition to attend the University of Vermont, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in biology in 2009. Alli became interested in malaria parasite sex ratios during an undergraduate course taught by Dr. Joseph Schall, and after completing an honors thesis with Dr. Schall, she was still invested in the project and decided to continue as a graduate student. She successfully applied for the NSF GRFP at the beginning of her second year. Allison’s interests in parasite ecology and evolutionary biology remain broad, and in addition to her work with malaria parasites, she received an NSF East Asia and the Pacific Summer Institute Fellowship to study trematode life cycles with Dr. Robert Poulin at the University of Otago in New Zealand during the summer between her second and third years as a graduate student at the University of Vermont.