Dr. Gulia-Nuss's research focuses on understanding the basic biology of ticks in order to identify novel targets for tick control. Her long-term goal is to develop novel strategies to control ticks and tick-borne disease transmission. To this end, she is generating first-ever transgenic ticks using CRISPR-Cas gene-editing system and employing other cutting-edge genomic techniques such as Hi-C based genome scaffolding for better assembly and annotation of the tick genome. Her current work focuses on understanding the role of insulin signaling in tick-pathogen interactions and differences in chemoreception circuit in different Ixodes species. Understanding tick- pathogen interactions and genes involved in host seeking are vital to development of novel disease transmission control strategies.