Internships

Rebecca Butler ’10

The spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria has led to bacterial infections that are more difficult and more costly to treat. Understanding the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria is a necessary precursor to implementing effective measures to control the transmission.  Much of my time at RFF was spent updating a model of steptococcal transmission in day care centers that made use of an extensive database containing data from an intervention project in Sweden.  The model, coded in R, showed the effects of various policies in containing penicillin-resistant pneumococci.  I also developed a model of the transmission of antibiotic resistant bacteria during a flu epidemic, for which I hope to gather empirical data this fall.