Paige Van de Vuurst
Paige Van de Vuurst
Assistant Professor
Climate and Environmental Change
Contact:
Email:
Paige Van de Vuurst
2036 H St, NW, Room 306
Washington DC 20052
Office Hours
Wednesday 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
or by appointment
Paige Van de Vuurst McClure is a disease ecologist and biogeographer from East Tennessee. She has worked extensively with the Laboratory of Disease Ecology and Biogeography at Virginia Tech, where she completed a MSc in Wildlife Conservation and a PhD in Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health. Her research focuses on the impacts of landscape and climate change on zoonotic diseases, with an emphasis on tropical and understudied systems. Paige has also studied invasive species dynamics and human-wildlife conflict through a OneHealth lense. She has conducted field work in Colombia, Saba, Mexico, Peru, Tanzania, and across multiple regions of the United States. Her current work focuses on the transmission of rabies by vampire bats to livestock and humans. Prior to graduate school, Paige graduated from Samford University in Birmingham Alabama and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania.
Van de Vuurst, P., Rist, C., Medina-Rodriguez, T., Osejo-Varona, A.F., Soler-Tovar, D., & Escobar, L.E. (2025). Drivers of rabies virus spillover risk distribution from vampire bats to livestock in Colombia. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Accepted for Publication September 2025.
Van de Vuurst, P., Gohlke, JM., & Escobar, LE. (2025). Future climate change and the distributional shift of the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus. Scientific Reports. Published February 2025.
Van de Vuurst, P. Qiao, H. Soler-Tovar, D, Escobar, LE (2023). Climate change linked to vampire bat expansion and pathogen-spillover risk. Ecography. Published October 2023.
Van de Vuurst, P. & Alexander, KA (2023). Identifying social behaviors related to disease transmission of Mycobacterium mungi in Banded Mongoose from accelerometer data. Ecological Solutions and Evidence. Published July 2023
Van de Vuurst, P. & Escobar, LE. (2023). Climate change and infectious disease: A review of evidence and trends. Infectious Diseases of Poverty. Published May 2023.
Magalhães, A.R. Codeço, C.T., Svenning, J.C., Escobar, L.E., Van de Vuurst, P. and Gonçalves-Souza, T. (2023). Neglected tropical diseases risk correlates with poverty and early ecosystem destruction. Infectious Diseases of Poverty. Published March 2023.
Escobar, LE, Velasco-Villa, A, Satheshkumar, PS, Nakazawa, Y, & Van de Vuurst, P. (2023). Revealing the complexity of rabies “spillover transmission”: A commentary. Infectious Diseases of Poverty. Published February 2023.
Van de Vuurst, P. Diaz, M. Rodriguez-San Pedro, A. Allendes, J.L. Brown, N. Gutierrez, J.D. Zarza, H. Oliveira, S. Cárdenas-Canales, E. Barquez, R. Escobar, L.E. (2022). A database of common vampire bat reports. Scientific Data. Published February 2022.
Van de Vuurst, P., Moore, SA, Isaac, EJ, Ibrahim, YC, Wolf, TM, and Escobar, LE (2021). Reconstructing landscapes of ungulate predation. Current Zoology. Published August 2021.
Van de Vuurst, P. and Escobar, LE. Perspective: Climate change and the relocation of Indonesia’s capital to Borneo. (2020). Frontiers in Earth Science. Published March 2020.
Sally Bohland Award for Innovative Service, 2024
Excellence in Oral Presentation Award: Center for Emerging, Zoonotic, and Arthropod-Borne Pathogens, 2022
Burd S. McGinness Fellow, 2021
Marion Cruse Scholar, Samford University, 2014
MSc, Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech
PhD, Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health, Virginia Tech
GEOG 1003 - Society and Environment
GEOG 3133 - Social-Ecological Systems
GEOG 3194 - Climate Change & Public Health
GEOG 6233 - Social-Ecological Systems
GEOG 6293 - Climate Change & Public Health