Tina Babler

Research Technician

Kristina (who preferentially goes by Tina) grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, Dallas, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee all prior to going to college. She likes to summarize her upbringing as “being born in the North yet raised in the South,” due to the multiple long-distance moves her family made when she was young. She attended Middle Tennessee State University earning a B.S. in Animal Science with a minor in Biology, where genetics, micro-, molecular, and marine biology were her most favored subjects. Growing up, she was a competitive gymnast and classical violinist, who always had a passion for animal health, and the beauty of nature.

Following the completion of her B.S. degree, she moved to Miami, FL to attend the University of Miami to receive a M.P.S. degree in Marine Conservation, with a concentration in animal physiology and disease. Her research focused on the osmoregulatory impacts that high salt loads (such as magnesium) placed on benthic marine fish’s renal systems (study animal: Gulf Toadfish), and via gene expression of various tissues, investigated the cation channels responsible for maintaining homeostasis under salinity stress. 

Since October of 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, she became a pivotal researcher of a wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) research project at the University of Miami, which steadily grew to collaborate with multiple Universities and the public sector of Miami-Dade County. The project imparted key data for informing the University, in addition to the Florida Department of Health, of SARS-CoV-2 spread throughout the community. She gained hands-on epidemiological experience in the laboratory, worked among a collaborative team of scientists for expanding the role of WBE for public health, and initiated multiple publications covering a plethora of sub-topics in WBE.

She moved to the beautiful state of Utah in the spring of 2023 and is currently focusing on coronavirus evolutionary biology, utilizing in vitro cell culture work and Mouse Hepatitis Virus (MHV) in the Elde Lab. She is excited to delve deeper into the field of virology from her interest in infectious diseases through working with SARS-CoV-2.