Prof. Laura D. Kramer, is the Director of the Arbovirus Laboratories at the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health and Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the School of Public Health, State University of New York at Albany. She got her PhD from Cornell Medical School and her Postdoctoral training at University of California, Berkeley. She has more than 240 publications about arboviruses. Her main research interest is focused on basic and applied field and laboratory studies examining the interaction of mosquito and tick-borne arboviruses, arthropod vectors, and vertebrate hosts, and how this interaction impacts transmission intensity and perpetuation of the pathogen.