Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher/Geographer - Shoklo Malaria Research Unit - Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit
Brief Bio: Most of my research is about the demography and epidemiology of populations living along international borders and in conflict zones. Right now I'm working on some malaria elimination projects along the Thailand-Myanmar border. If we're successful we will scale these efforts up to larger areas, potentially even to other parts of the world. I'm mapping populations that have never been mapped and working with a team that is geared toward delivering health care to extremely remote populations in current and former conflict zones along the international border. Essentially I'm heading the GIS portion of Shoklo Malaria Research Unit. It's an extremely challenging job, but I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing and I even get paid for it.
Penn State’s Demography Program: The demography program at Penn State has been an amazing thing for me in many ways. The skills I learned through the program have been applicable in a wide array of settings, regardless of whether I'm analyzing human populations, microbial populations, or even populations of populations. The network is amazing too. I'm frequently running into people that are somehow related to the program and/or have a lot of respect for the program. This opens a lot of doors.
Weblinks:
http://scholar.google.co.th/citations?user=PXvKmGMAAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmparker1
http://www.shoklo-unit.com/
http://www.tropmedres.ac/