Erin Welsh, Ph.D.

Erin Welsh, Ph.D., is a scientist and science communicator who produces and co-hosts the globally popular podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, that she and co-host Erin Allmann Updyke launched in 2017. Each episode explores the biology, history and current status of a particular disease or other medical topic – several episodes of which have even been selected for inclusion in the David J. Spencer CDC Museum COVID-19 Web Collection! Welsh earned her M.S. in Epidemiology from the University of Louisville in 2012 and her Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from the University of Illinois in 2018. Her research investigated the host-parasite dynamics of nematode infections in humans as well as the climatic and ecosystem drivers of tick-borne disease risk in Panama and Finland. When she's not podcasting, she's busy walking her dog, tending to her garden, reading a novel or hiking in the mountains outside Denver, Colorado, where she lives.