Meet Dr. Dennis Bente, a One Health advocate and Professor in the Microbiology & Immunology department at UTMB. His research focuses on tick-borne viruses and their effects on human and animal health, with a particular interest in tick-borne hemorrhagic fever viruses. He's an expert in biocontainment and conducts his research under maximum safety conditions in the BSL4 labs at UTMB's Galveston National Laboratory.

Dr. Bente received his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, Germany. He has extensive expertise in highly contagious transboundary diseases and zoonotic viruses in high biocontainment. He's also very passionate about science education and communication and is always happy to help students and scholars with their career and professional development.

In his free time, Dr. Bente likes to take care of his pets, including his tarantulas, and volunteer with wildlife rescue groups. He's a remarkable scientist and a valuable member of the scientific community.

Dr. Ledoux grew up on a livestock farm in the Adirondack Mountains. She graduated from Cornell University in 2020 with a Bachelors of Science in Biology & Society and a minor in Infectious Disease Biology. In 2025 she attained her PhD in Human Pathophysiology & Translational Medicine from the University of Texas Medical Branch. Dr. Ledoux’s research experience spans bacteriology, parasitology, virology and neuroimmunology. She also has prior experience in the public health sector. She is a published poet and has written for the university’s One Health newsletter in addition to her work writing scripts for and co-hosting Infectious Science. When not writing she loves to read. Since 2020 she has read more than 506 books.

A second-year medical student at UT Medical Branch in Galveston, Christina realized she wanted to pursue a career in medicine after witnessing the chronic lack of healthcare available to many of the communities that helped raise her. Born in San Antonio, Texas, Christina obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin before working in specialty veterinary medicine as both a patient care coordinator and a scrub nurse. At UTMB, she serves on her class’s student council as Vice President and enjoys partaking in intramural sports, taking long walks with her dogs, and creating social media posts during her downtime to educate viewers on the reasoning behind healthcare practices and procedures while simultaneously giving viewers a glimpse into the day-to-day life of a medical student. Looking to the future, one of Christina’s greatest hopes and goals is to establish mobile clinics throughout Latin America to improve rural and border communities’ access to basic health care.

Alexander Alvarado is a second-year Microbiology and Immunology PhD student at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Currently, they work under the co-mentorship of Dr. Thomas Geisbert and Dr. Courtney Woolsey in the Galveston National Lab, focusing on generating recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus vectored vaccines for New World arenaviruses like Guanarito virus, the causative agent of Venezuelan Hemorrhagic Fever. After graduation, Alexander hopes to pursue a career at the intersection of virology and public health policy, working to mitigate global disparities in the burden of infectious diseases. Prior to their enrollment at UTMB, they received their Bachelors of Science degree from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2023. At UTMB, they also serve as president of the Microbiology and Immunology Student Organization and as a member of the Student Health and Counseling Governance Committee. In their spare time, Alexander, an avid reader, also enjoys hiking and playing tennis.

A long-time performing musician and music educator, Corey jumped into post-production audio when much of the live arts and entertainment world went either dormant and online during the COVID pandemic. He brings his background in social science, the arts, community media and activism to the world of radio and podcasting. Corey holds a BA in Psychology from Swarthmore College and an honorary degree in loving speculative fiction. He and his family split their time between Gaborone, Botswana and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

Dr. Dacso is the Chair ad interim of the Department of Global Health and Emerging Diseases in the new School of Public and Population Health at UTMB. He is also a general internal medicine clinician and an Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine. As the director of the John Sealy School of Medicine global health concentration, he provides mentorship and supervision to medical students and residents participating in international health electives while collaborating with host partners to design and implement projects that serve their needs. His research focuses on strengthening the capacity for a One Health approach to emerging and re-emerging arboviral infections in the Dominican Republic. Since the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, he has become engaged in institutional preparedness for high-consequence pathogens clinical care, serving as an active member of the Biocontainment Care Unit response team and as the education and training lead for UTMB’s Special Pathogens Excellence in Clinical Treatment, Readiness, & Education (SPECTRE) program.

Connie brings a background in business, public relations and marketing to The Infectious Science Podcast team. As the Director of Operations for the Galveston National Lab, she wears lots of hats, but really likes launching new initiatives and assisting collaborative teams with moving projects forward and communicating their results. Prior to joining UTMB, she worked on the corporate side of marketing, primarily as a copywriter and communications strategist before launching her first marketing firm in Boulder, Colorado. She later moved to North Texas and worked for ad agencies and PR firms as an independent copywriter and publicist before starting her next venture – a PR firm focused on public relations, trade show marketing and website development. Her clients included both start-ups and large corporations with new product lines, which she says is not unlike working with scientists and their research discoveries. Connie claims she prefers to stay “behind the scenes,” but admits she’s having lots of fun in the podcast studio and is becoming more comfortable in front of the mic She received a degree in journalism (advertising) from the University of Missouri and completed an M.S. in marketing and an MBA at the University of Colorado at Denver. She relocated to Galveston and joined UTMB in 2014.

Daniele is a post-doctoral fellow working at the intersection of ecology, evolution, and epidemiology. She is interested in the role of environmental stress on viral evolution.