December 19, 2023 | Erin Bluvas, bluvase@sc.edu

Karlen Correa Vélez has been studying Vibrio – a harmful bacteria that causes life-threatening wound infections and severe illness if consumed in raw seafood – for nearly a decade, and she’s not done. The Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences graduate will continue her research into this growing public health threat as a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University.

“Climate change-induced stressors and sociological factors, such as changes in temperature, anomalous weather patterns, and coastal population expansion, are contributing to the increase in frequency of Vibrio infections,” Correa Vélez says. “My dissertation findings showed that these combined socio-ecological interactions can alter Vibrio population and lead to the selection of environmental reservoirs of pathogenic Vibrio strains, increasing public health risk.”

It was her master’s program at the University of Puerto Rico that introduced her to this lifelong adversary. Growing up in Ponce, Correa Vélez had always had a passion for protecting the marine environment. Located on the coast in Mayagüez, her graduate research specialized in detecting and characterizing the problematic bacterium. USC offered the perfect program to continue this work.

Researchers in the ENHS department helped Correa Vélez broaden her perspective of the ocean environment. Working closely with Sean Norman, she contributed to the Vibrio-focused Environmental Microbiology Project – one of four major research initiatives led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences-funded ($5.7 million) Oceans and Human Health Center on Climate Change Interactions, which is based at the Arnold School and led by ENHS chair Geoff Scott. As a part of Norman’s lab, Correa Vélez also helped keep communities safe by monitoring coronavirus levels at wastewater treatment plants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Norman J. Arnold Doctoral Fellow led her own research during her time at USC as well. Funded by a SPARC grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research, Correa Vélez combined her expertise from these two areas to study the impact of treated municipal sewage in our coastal zones using Vibrio bacteria as a model. She won the Aleksandr Savchuk Foundation Award for this work.

Additional honors include the Future Leaders Mentoring Fellowship from the American Society of Microbiology and her department’s Outstanding Oceans and Human Health Student Award. Correa Vélez also graduates with ten peer-reviewed publications to her name.  

“My time at USC was awesome,” she says of her experience. “I made friends that became an extended family, no matter that we came from different countries and spoke different languages.”

For prospective students, Correa Vélez recommends asking questions and reaching out to faculty members with similar research interests.

“The ENHS program takes an interdisciplinary approach that brings together various research areas, allowing you to gain experience in the laboratory, fieldwork and community engagement.”

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