Paul Richardson's Research

Dr. Paul E. Richardson's research is focused on looking at novel means to prevent/inhibit/detect diseases that plague our community. 

Currently, there are three research projects in his laboratory. The environmental bacteriophage project wants to isolate and purify naturally occurring bacteriophages in our water systems to study their ability to control bacterial blooms and ecological diversity. These viruses could later be used to treat contaminated water systems that have been closed to bacterial contamination and since these treatments already exist in the ecosystem, they would not distrust the ecological balance of our beaches.

The Heartworm project is monitoring diseases in our community by collecting insects and detecting the heartworm parasite that lives inside of them.  Monitoring our community and environment is the best plan to get advanced warnings of potential threats to our community before they manifest themselves in the population.

The last project is the human papillomavirus project. The lab is testing a series of DNA-based procedures that could detect papillomavirus infections and identify the subtype of the virus. Once these tests have been worked out, the idea is to look at the incidence rate of papillomavirus infection in the male population on campus and in our community.