Schall has been honored by the University of Vermont with the two highest awards for teaching excellence, and the university's highest award for research excellence. His research has been continuously funded for more than 30 years by the NSF, and by the Morris Animal Foundation for studies on avian malaria parasites. His work has resulted in more than 90 publications in major scientific journals.

Alli entered our graduate program in the fall of 2009, but was already very familiar to the Biology Department. She graduated with her BA in Biology after completing her Senior Honors project in the malaria lab. Each year, the department honors the graduating senior with the highest GPA, and Alli was our 2009 winner! Naturally, we tried to lure Alli into staying on as a graduate student, and were very pleased that she has accepted. Alli did field work at the California (Hopland) field site with undergraduate Honors student Jennifer Fricke in the summer of 2008. This jump-started her grad project. Alli has returned to the Hopland site for the full summers of 2009, 2010, and 2012.

Her research examines the gametocyte sex ratio of Plasmodium mexicanum, particularly the influence of clonal diversity within an infection on the parasite's sex ratio. She uses a combination of classical parasitological techniques (hundreds of hours on the microscope), modern molecular methods (genotyping infections using variable genetic markers), and modeling. Alli demonstrated that there is genetic diversity for sex ratio when parasites are in single-clone infections, only the second time this has been documented (although the effect may be common). That study was published in Parasitology, Alli's first publication. Alli's second publication, also in Parasitology, examined the relationship between the fecundity (number of gametes produced) for male gametocyte cells and infection sex ratio (the relationship matched expectations of sex ratio theory).

Alli is also an avid teacher, and has volunteered at a local Middle School, and already has taken a series of undergrad and high school researchers under wing both in the field and the lab.

For her Honors project, Megan chose an ambitious research program. She sought to understand the genetic diversity of both the malaria parasite and its sand fly vector. First, Megan asked if specific clones of the parasite are more or less likely to occur in mixed-clone infections than others, the first time this has been done for any malaria parasite. Her second project seeks to understand the geographic patterns in sand fly genetic diversity (thus the search for useful markers).

Megan blends interests she inherited from her parents, a planned career in medicine (her father is a cardiologist) and fencing (her mother was a varsity fencer as an undergraduate). Megan has competed in fencing at the national level, placing very high in her event. We try not to make jokes about the a medical professional who can stab 'em and then treat 'em (OK, that was a joke).