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Department Welcomes Michel Slotman to Faculty

As the fall semester begins to near, the Department of Entomology announces the arrival of Dr. Michel Slotman as the Department's newest faculty member.

Slotman joined the Department on August 1 as an assistant professor and medical entomologist.  He served most recently as an Associate Research Scientist in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University.

Slotman looks forward to working with students and other faculty members in the Department and at the University.

"There is a lot of outstanding and interesting research in this department," he said. "I am very excited about being part of this department and is looking forward to interact and collaborate with students and other faculty."

His research focuses on the evolutionary and population genetics of medically important insects and in the past has focused primarily on Anopheles mosquitoes, the vectors of human malaria.

In the fall, Slotman will be working on a research project dealing with the effects of large-scale malaria control on mosquito population in Equatorial Guinea, and the population structure and migration rates of Anopheles melas, a malaria vector with a patchy distribution.

Other projects he is developing concern the genetic basis of the strong preference of Africa’s most important malaria vector Anopheles gambiae for biting people.

Slotman believes that this characteristic of the mosquito may provide a very promising target for future malaria control. Slotman is also interested in incorporating the local mosquito fauna into his research program.

"There is certainly no shortage of interesting and important questions that we can ask about the locally important mosquitoes that transmit diseases like West-Nile and other encephalitic viruses," he said.

Slotman received his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Yale University, and did his undergraduate work at the Wageningen Agricultural University in his native Holland.