Chelsea Wood, an assistant professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, is among five faculty members across the University of Washington that have been awarded early-career fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Announced on Feb. 15, Sloan Fellowships are open to scholars in eight scientific and technical fields — chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences and physics — and honor those early-career researchers whose achievements mark them as the next generation of scientific leaders.

Wood’s research explores the ecology of parasites and pathogens in a changing world. She is interested in how human impacts on ecosystems affect the transmission of parasites. Wood’s work has shown that disruption can alter what kinds of parasites are common and rare — increasing the abundance of some kinds of parasites and decreasing the abundance of others. The Sloan Fellowship will allow Wood and her team to look back in time at how parasite transmission changed as industrialization intensified human impacts on the oceans.

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