UCSD - University of California - San Diego

04/23/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/23/2026 10:19

Meet the Grad Student Who Launched an App That Relays Disease-Carrying Insect Risks

Published Date

April 23, 2026

Article Content

Growing up, no one would call Ellie Fausett the outdoorsy type. Not even close. As a child, Fausett's overwhelming preference was to stay safely tucked indoors, avoiding all things bugs and dirt.

One chance encounter in a college hallway changed all of that. Today, the third-year UC San Diego graduate student is endlessly fascinated by insects and the worlds they inhabit. And, even surprising herself, she now loves getting deep into the muck of field research.

When she's not conducting field studies of invasive ants on Santa Cruz Island, or studying them inside Professor Holway's lab in the Department of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, Fausett devotes her time to her passion project: linking the public with reliable information about insects, arachnids and the disease risks they present. She's the mastermind behind a new tool that burst in popularity shortly after its launch last year that brings the curious and safety-minded together with the resources to help keep them safe. Shortly after its launch, Vector Guard was recognized with first-place awards by the Ecological Society of America and RevenueCat Shipaton. Currently available through the Apple App Store, an Android version of the app, as well as a version designed for risks to pets, will be available later this spring.

Today spoke with Fausett about launching Vector Guard, her motivations behind the app and her surprising transformation into an outdoors disease risk expert.

What is Vector Guard?

It's a mobile app that provides real-time, hyperlocal risk information about disease-carrying insects and arachnids. The app covers five vectors: ticks, mosquitoes, biting flies, midges and bed bugs. It gives users an ecological profile and features identification guidelines, behavioral notes and tips for protecting yourself against these vectors.

Vector Guard pulls from about 175 websites, including government websites and peer-reviewed papers. We interface those with iNaturalist species distribution maps so we can provide local level reports of what people are actually interacting with. Users then know which diseases are of concern in their area and case rates for their county.

Graduate student Ellie Fausett collects tick samples at a wildlife management area in Georgia.

Who are the app's main users?

I developed Vector Guard for anyone who spends time outdoors. Our main users are hikers, outdoor enthusiasts, families and pet owners. Vector-borne disease risk varies dramatically by region.

West Coast hikers mainly deal with western black-legged ticks, which can carry Lyme disease but cause far fewer infections here than in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. Much of the South lives with long mosquito seasons and growing concern about a red-meat allergy called alpha-gal syndrome, which is linked to bites from lone star ticks. The Northeast and mid-Atlantic are still the main hot spots for Lyme disease in the United States. Here in San Diego, both tick and mosquito problems are milder than in national hot spots, but these vectors are still present, so your real risk depends on exactly where you live, work and hike.

Even within regions, risk shifts county by county based on local vector activity and disease incidence. Where you live and where you hike shapes your exposure in ways most people don't realize until they've already crossed into unfamiliar territory - which is exactly what Vector Guard is designed to show you in real time.

How is the app supported?

Most features are free; a premium subscription is $2.99 per month, which we reinvest directly into the app. Paid features include pet-specific information and species-specific maps. Our business model is built around a justice principle: every premium subscription automatically gives 50 free subscriptions to people in low-income, high-risk communities, selected by a county-level index that weighs disease burden against median income. No applications, no waitlists. Public health data is a right, not a privilege. Vector Guard operates without ads, and for less than a cup of coffee a month, your subscription keeps it free and accessible for the communities who need it most.

How did you start down the path of developing Vector Guard?

I was at my cousin's wedding, helping remove a tick from a fellow bridesmaid, when the conversation turned to tick-borne diseases. I was shocked by the misinformation in the room, so I pulled out my phone to show some credible sources and watched my audience's eyes glaze over before I could find anything useful. The CDC organizes everything by species, then again by disease; finding what's relevant to your area requires a 10- to 15-minute deep dive. No one is going to do that. And when information is available elsewhere, it's either buried in ads, factually incorrect or so dense that most people give up before they get to the point.

I went to visit my sister and her boyfriend, Weston Bell Geddes, and found myself complaining about the lack of easily accessible local data. There has to be something between broadly crowdsourcing answers on Facebook and navigating websites that are just slightly too complicated for the average person. Weston builds apps for a living, and we started sketching ideas on a whiteboard. My core design principle was simple: start hyperlocal, at the county level, and surface the vectors you're most likely to actually encounter. If a user takes away one thing, it should be their most probable risk. Weston's development expertise turned that idea into a real product, and Vector Guard has been a true co-founding collaboration ever since.

Even within regions, risk shifts county by county based on local vector activity and disease incidence. Where you live and where you hike shapes your exposure in ways most people don't realize until they've already crossed into unfamiliar territory - which is exactly what Vector Guard is designed to show you in real time. - Biological Sciences graduate student and Vector Guard creator Ellie Fausett

What's been the public's reaction to Vector Guard so far?

So positive. I've been most surprised by how much people want to help. Almost immediately, users started offering to connect me with vector control specialists in their area - people who know the local ticks and mosquitoes intimately and will tell you exactly when something's wrong. That's been an invaluable resource. For the past six months I've been building a network of health professionals and vector control specialists who review the app's data for regional accuracy. At the end of the day, nobody wants to get sick, and that shared concern has brought together a community of people genuinely invested in making Vector Guard the best tool it can be.

How do you address misinformation spread in public?

At almost every farmers market or outdoor event I've attended, someone walks up and pulls out their phone to show me a photo of a tick - either one they found on themselves, their kid or their dog. They want to know what it is and whether they should be worried. And almost every time, I ask how they removed it, and the answer makes me wince. Burning it off. Twisting it out. Coating it in Vaseline. These are incredibly common techniques, and they all risk leaving the mouthparts embedded in the skin. This is how a manageable situation becomes a real infection.

I don't blame anyone for this. During COVID, trust in government sources took a hit, and people found community and answers on social media instead. The instinct to ask your network when you're scared makes complete sense. The information just isn't always right. Vector Guard exists in that gap. We are not a medical app and we never claim to be. We're an educational tool: we tell you what species are active in your area, how often bites lead to illness and what your local health department is actually reporting. We give you the facts so you can make informed decisions and know when it's time to see a doctor.

What's been most satisfying about being able to share your insect expertise with the public?

One moment that sticks with me happened at a farmers market. A woman came up to my table visibly stressed - she was a new mom and had been calling her pediatrician every time her baby got a mosquito bite. Every single time. She was exhausted and scared and didn't know what else to do. We sat and talked for a while, and I showed her how to open Vector Guard and read the local disease burden data for Southern California. She could see, right there, that mosquito-borne illness risk in her area was very low. I watched something shift in her face. She didn't need to panic. She just needed real information.

Co-founder Ellie Fausett in Times Square with a Vector Guard billboard sponsored by ReveueCat, which recognized the app with a top award.

That's the most satisfying part of this work - not just raising awareness, but changing how people think about the creatures they're sharing the world with. Most people come to me with the same set of fears: bugs are dangerous, they're out to get us, they're the enemy. I try to reframe that. Mosquitoes aren't malicious. They're more like tiny aliens interacting with the environment in their own way - and you happen to be part of that environment. It's not personal. It's just biology. And once people understand that, they're more receptive to practical solutions.

One of the first things Vector Guard recommends is checking your yard for standing water after rain. Mosquitoes only need about an inch of water to breed, and they don't travel far from where they hatched - so reducing standing water on your own property is one of the most effective things you can do. The app sends a reminder every time it rains. Small nudge, real impact.

Many entomologists grow up with an interest in the insect world. You took an unusual route. How did that happen?

I was the epitome of an indoors kid. Scared of bugs, scared of being outside and consistently told that science wasn't for me.

When I got to Emory University I had a small crisis before classes even started. At Emory, you can't register for classes without a faculty member and mine had forgotten. I was sitting in a hallway, quietly falling apart, when a man walked up and asked what was wrong. I told him what happened. He said he was on the faculty and could help. We never got around to talking about classes. Instead we talked about the two books I'd read that summer - "Silent Spring" and "Braiding Sweetgrass" - and the birds and ecology around campus. By the end he just assumed I'd want environmental science classes. I resisted telling him I was not good at science or being outside. He asked me, gently, what I thought college was actually for.

Who you are at 15 is not who you are at 18 or 25, and the point of college is to try new things. All the lower-level ecology courses were full, so he put me in his upper-level field ecology lab instead. Nobody had ever looked at me and decided I needed to be challenged harder. I had never been exposed to field ecology before that class and it turned out to be where my passion truly was.

All of it traces back to a kid from Los Angeles who was scared of bugs and thought science wasn't for her... We've spent so long treating insects like the enemy. Vector Guard is my attempt to change that. - Ellie Fausett
Vector Guard co-founders Weston Bell Geddes and Ellie Fausett.

Was there any hesitation about working with bugs and getting your hands dirty?

My sophomore year I decided I wanted lab experience and emailed every lab at Emory. Only one responded. Dr. Prokopec, the mosquito guy, told me I could start Monday. I was apprehensive but too curious to say no.

I started by separating mosquito larvae and pupae into their different life stages. It sounds tedious but I was completely hooked. I had never thought about mosquitoes as anything other than something to swat. Suddenly I was thinking about their behavior, their biology, the arc of their entire life cycle. The more time I spent with them the more questions I had an overwhelming urge to ask and answer.

When the opportunity came to shift into tick research I honestly didn't think much of it. I had grown up in Los Angeles and had never seen a tick in my life. But something clicked. I became completely fixated on their foraging behavior (the way they find and interact with a host). I went from an indoor kid who screamed at bugs to someone who couldn't stop thinking about them. Dr. Prokopec's lab changed the entire direction of my life and I am so grateful that he was the only one who wrote back.

How do you balance your Vector Guard work with your PhD work?

Honestly, I'm tired. Balancing Vector Guard with a PhD is hard, and I won't pretend otherwise. But I care deeply about both, and I'm grateful to be doing work that feels meaningful on two fronts.

I'm lucky to have a PhD advisor who encourages me to try things and supports both my academic work and Vector Guard. Invasive species ecology is the common thread running through everything I do. My master's looked at how tick populations shifted after the invasive Asian longhorned tick was introduced. My PhD looks at how native ants recover once the invasive Argentine ant is removed. Same question, different organisms.

My research right now centers on ant behavior, which I genuinely love, but I think ticks are where I'm headed long term. I'm hoping to move into a postdoc in tick fieldwork or a tick research lab, somewhere I can bring what Vector Guard has taught me back into a formal scientific setting.

And honestly all of it traces back to a kid from Los Angeles who was scared of bugs and thought science wasn't for her. I didn't know how interesting any of this was until I was dropped into the middle of it. When I talk to people about insects now I see that same moment of realization on their faces. It's cool. People find it genuinely cool once someone explains it without the jargon and the fear. We've spent so long treating insects like the enemy. Vector Guard is my attempt to change that.

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