People

Our lab is housed in the Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Vermont. We plan to accept students from the following programs starting in Fall 2026:

Animal BioSciences for prospective PhD, MS, and AMP students
Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Sciences for first-year PhD students scheduling rotations

We will be affiliated with the Vermont Collaborative for Immunology and Host-Microbe Interactions and the VBRN Disease Ecology Working Group, and are a founding member of the MAP2LE network. I am also always looking for curious and dedicated UVM undergraduate researchers to join our team!

Current Team

Rebekah Honce, PhD

Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor of One Health

Bekah is originally from West Virginia. She attended West Virginia Wesleyan for her undergraduate degree in Biology, where she was active in outdoor recreation and college athletics. After graduating with her BS, she joined the Integrated Program in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and received her PhD in 2020. Her doctoral work was mentored by Dr. Stacey Schultz-Cherry at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and focused on understanding influenza virus pathogenesis and evolution in high-risk hosts. Bekah completed her postdoctoral work with Dr. Jason Botten in the UVM Larner College of Medicine, working on the cellular regulation of arenavirus defective interfering particles. Since moving to the Green Mountain State, she has enjoyed summitting the “Vermont 5” (3/5!) and visiting all the local coffee shops (but only for tea).

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