From a Pennsylvania Dairy Farm To The Front Lines of Food Safety

BLACKSBURG, Va. – Kirsten Masters grew up on a dairy farm in Bedford, Pennsylvania, surrounded by pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle. She showed animals through 4-H for 10 years. She loved agriculture and working with animals, and she assumed that was the path forward. Then she discovered mathematics. 

“I really fell in love with the modeling aspect of everything, especially infectious disease modeling,” said Masters, now a DVM/Ph.D. student in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. “I always wanted to find something that wouldn’t cause me to pick one side or the other.” 

She found that in the college’s dual degree program. And now, with a competitive USDA Adel A. Malak Scholarship in hand, she has found a career path that brings together every thread of her background. 

A winding path to Blacksburg 

Masters earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 2020, where she first encountered the world of infectious disease modeling as an undergraduate. After graduation, she spent two years working in a veterinary clinic, reinforcing her commitment to animal medicine. She also served in the Army Reserve as part of the Army Veterinary Corps, conducting food inspections and cross-training with veterinarians at butcher plants. 

When she applied to Virginia Tech, she was looking at the DVM program. She didn’t know the dual degree option existed. 

“They actually reached out to me and were like, ‘Hey, we see you have a huge background in research. We think you’d be a really great candidate for this dual degree program,’” Masters said. 

That outreach led her to the lab of Nick Ruktanonchai, an assistant professor in population health sciences whose work in infectious disease modeling and human mobility offered a natural fit for her mathematical training. For Ruktanonchai, who had previously focused on malaria and COVID-19 research, the partnership opened new territory. 

“The idea of doing anything sort of zoonotic or veterinary was completely foreign and new to me,” Ruktanonchai said. “It was serendipitous, because for me, integrating into the vet school involved doing veterinary medicine and working with animals. It was nice that she was in the DVM/Ph.D., because we were able to discuss avian influenza modeling.” 

Masters spent her first three years at Virginia Tech focusing primarily on her Ph.D. and building her research portfolio. Now in her first year of the DVM program and her fourth year of the Ph.D., she is doing both simultaneously — a pace that even her classmates find surprising. 

“A lot of them are very surprised,” Masters said. “Like, how does that all work? How do you find the time?” 

Her answer is blunt: calendars, schedules, and a willingness to keep moving. “I’m very, very time oriented,” she said. “I’m a very scheduled person with everything, and I like to be busy. I think that’s where I thrive the best.” 

Ruktanonchai, who has mentored Masters through the entire process, said the compressed timeline of the dual degree demanded a fundamentally different approach to Ph.D. advising. 

“We had to stay focused,” he said. “We don’t have a ton of time. We don’t want to get sidetracked.” 

Tracking avian influenza

Masters’ Ph.D. research focuses on avian influenza and the role of migratory birds in its spread. When the current avian influenza pandemic emerged, outbreaks were sporadic and lacked clear geographic patterns. Masters and Ruktanonchai turned to migratory bird flight data to examine whether the places where birds stop and congregate correlate with locations where avian influenza outbreaks occur in poultry populations. 

“We’ve known in the past that migratory birds are your known carriers,” Masters said. “But a lot of it is really looking at how that is correlating to where we’re seeing it.” 

The research has shown a correlation between migratory bird stopover sites and outbreak locations. Ruktanonchai said the work reflects a systems-level approach to disease that draws directly on the strengths of a public health department housed within a veterinary college. 

“We’re thinking about food systems. We’re thinking about migratory bird systems,” Ruktanonchai said. “These are all complex networks that interact to spread that disease.” 

He said Masters’ combination of clinical training and quantitative research skills puts her in a rare position. In public health, the people who collect field data and the people who analyze it are often different groups — and critical context can be lost in that gap. 

“She’ll be the person who both collects the data and then also analyzes the data and figures out what that means within the system,” Ruktanonchai said. “It’s really common to see a disconnect between the data providers and the data analysis folks. And there’s a million things you can miss in that interaction.” 

A door opens 

When a hip injury forced Masters to step away from the Army Reserve, she began looking for another way into public health veterinary work. The Adel A. Malak Scholarship, offered through the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, fit perfectly. 

The scholarship, named for a USDA public health veterinarian who spent his career in food safety and mentoring students before his death in 2012, provides up to $40,000 per year for tuition and fees and includes paid training during summer and school breaks. Recipients work alongside public health veterinarians in federally inspected food establishments, learning the regulatory and animal welfare systems that protect the nation’s food supply. The program is designed to prepare graduates to step directly into careers as public health veterinarians with the USDA. 

For Masters, the scholarship represents something more than financial support. 

“I really think I did it more for the experience and the potential future job,” she said. “I was always told, ‘Don’t let money be your deciding factor.’ I try to let the experiences of things influence me more.” 

The scholarship runs through her 2029 graduation, and the practical training aligns directly with her Army Reserve experience and her research on food systems and zoonotic disease. 

“It’s really got that animal welfare side, but then also that human consumer side of making sure it’s all together,” she said. 

Ruktanonchai said Masters’ trajectory validates the unique position of a public health department within a veterinary college. Her success with the Adel A. Malak Scholarship speaks directly to what the Department of Population Health Sciences can offer students. 

“If there is a scholarship that we want our students to be competitive for, that really speaks to the strengths of what our department has — being in public health and being at a vet school — it’s this kind of thing,” he said. 

Masters, who still dreams of field work with agencies like the CDC or the USDA, said the dual degree program and the scholarship have brought together every piece of her background in ways she couldn’t have planned from that dairy farm in Bedford. 

“My whole career goal was the public health side of it,” she said. “You know how to implement all the strategies, but then when you get on the field, it’s kind of different. That was the whole goal of it all.”