Dr. Tsao has a Bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and Masters and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University School of Medicine before becoming a professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University in 2003. She was promoted to Full Professor in 2023 and has published more than 60 research papers.Dr. Tsao has more than 20 years of experience studying the ecology of ticks and tick-borne pathogens with implications for improving public health. Dr. Tsao has investigated the ecology of Lyme disease at local, regional, and continental spatial scales. Funded by the CDC, NIH, and other sources, Dr. Tsao’s current research includes trying to understand the ecological processes underlying the dynamics, distribution, and genetic diversity of the tick vector and its associated zoonotic microbes; how to reduce Lyme disease risk by intervening in the enzootic cycle and by changing human behavior; and how interactions between the microbiome, blacklegged tick, and Lyme borreliosis bacterium may influence tick phenotypes and disease risk. Dr. Tsao has served as an associate editor for the international journal Ticks and Tickborne Diseases; served as a member of the 2018 Subcommittee for Disease Vectors, Surveillance, and Prevention for the US Department of Health and Human Service's Tickborne Disease Working Group; and was a co-author of the 2021 Infectious Disease Society of America's Guidelines for the Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Lyme disease.