I’m Dr. Kit McLean, a Postdoctoral Researcher in the University of Michigan’s Department of Epidemiology studying infectious disease transmission, surveillance, and emerging pathogen risk through a One Health framework.

I’m especially interested in how relationships between humans, animals, and the environment shape the ways diseases emerge and spread. Broadly, my work focuses on inferring population-level transmission dynamics from noisy, incomplete, and spatially structured data. Currently, my research specifically combines wastewater-based epidemiology, human mobility data, and respiratory virus surveillance to study how pathogens move through connected populations and environments.

Before my current position, I studied climate-sensitive and zoonotic disease systems through the Institute for Global Change Biology (IGCB). I completed my PhD in Meghan Duffy’s lab at the University of Michigan, where I combined fieldwork, experiments, and mathematical modeling to study disease processes in aquatic systems.

I approach my work ecologically, connecting patterns across species, systems, and scales. I’m always excited to share my work and collaborate with others interested in this perspective! If you have any questions or want to discuss further, you are welcome to reach me at [email protected].

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“We are all related, woven together in webs of reciprocal connection, where what happens to one happens to all.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Climate Book (edited by Greta Thunberg)