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Rafal Tokarz is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. His research focuses on microbial discovery and the epidemiology of human infectious diseases, particularly investigating ticks and tick-borne pathogens, and understanding their impact on human health. Dr. Tokarz's work is driven by key hypotheses regarding co-infections of human pathogens common in ticks and their contribution to polymicrobial infections which exacerbate tick-borne disease symptoms. He performs annual tick collections and monitors the prevalence of tick-borne agents, contributing significantly to improved diagnoses of tick-borne diseases through developed molecular and serologic tests. His analysis of tick microbiomes has led to the identification of a diverse array of new tick-associated agents, including 30 new viruses. Additionally, Dr. Tokarz is interested in pathogen discovery related to respiratory diseases, having performed analyses on specimens from respiratory disease outbreaks in various countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. He identified new respiratory viruses, notably defining a cluster of enterovirus D68 implicated in a severe pediatric respiratory disease outbreak in 2014.
Department of Anthropology (GSAS)