Tick research a passion of Creighton University professor

Travis Bourret, Ph.D., has a singular fascination with ticks.
 
In particular the assistant professor in the department of medical microbiology and immunology at Creighton University is fascinated with how ticks and the pathogens they carry function and survive.
 
Take, for example, the way the tick feeds.
 
"You typically feel it when a mosquito bites but when a tick attaches to you and starts feeding you don’t feel anything," Dr. Bourret said.
 
That’s because of an "amazing cocktail of chemicals and proteins that they secrete into the bite site that allows them to feed for days on humans without you knowing it."
 
Dr. Bourret is studying this amazing cocktail as well as how tick-borne pathogens like Borrelia burgdorferi, the pathogen that causes Lyme disease, survives in its arthropod host.
 
"Understanding how these tick and pathogens do this is fascinating for me as a biologist," he said.
 
Dr. Bourret is the new research institute coordinator representing Creighton University in the Nebraska INBRE program.
 
An alum of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Dr. Bourret, a first generation college graduate, first become involved with the Nebraska INBRE program in 2012 when he joined the biology faculty at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK).
 
While at UNK, Dr. Bourret received funding from the Nebraska INBRE program and mentored an INBRE scholar in his lab. In 2015 he joined the faculty at Creighton University, where he continues to mentor undergraduate students.
 
"Mentoring for undergraduate students is crucial for them to achieve their goals," Dr. Bourret said.
 
"You have students who are focused on pre-med or other tracks but once you get them in a research environment you just see their eyes light up and they begin to understand the value of biomedical research and the impact it can have on improving the lives of those they care about."
 
Dr. Bourret said he often tells students about his experience in graduate school at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, as well as the opportunity he had to work for the National Institutes of Health as a post-doctoral fellow at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont., to help them understand the educational trajectory of a scientist.
 
By doing so, he said he hopes it helps them as they plan for their future.
 
"I’m very passionate about research and about matching as many of our promising undergraduate scholars to laboratories where they will get the best possible research experiences," Dr. Bourret said.
 
As the newest research institute coordinator, Dr. Bourret will get to do just that.
 
"You don’t get to fully understand what is involved until you are working in the lab or out in the field," he said. "I want to make sure students get as many opportunities to do so as possible."