CANTON – A special public forum on tick-borne disease titled Preventing Lyme and other Tick-borne Disease will be held Monday, May 20, at 6:30 p.m. at Cornell Cooperative Extension in Canton; and Wednesday, May 22, 7:15 p.m., at Jernabi Coffeehouse, 11 Maple St., with Dr. Stephen Rich.

This presentation, aimed to the general public, will provide an overview of the hazards and risks associated with human biting ticks. The risk of Lyme and other diseases has increased since the first reports in the 1970s. With that expansion, the list of germs transmitted by ticks has grown long, but there are ways of significantly reducing exposure to these hazards, said a press release from Science Café.

The key to staying safe and healthy is to understand a few fundamental aspects of the biology and ecology of ticks.

Rich will describe and explain appropriate personal protection measures that can greatly reduce risk. Handouts and tick ID tools helping with tick identification and prevention will be provided.

Rich was born in Watertown, NY, attended Immaculate Heart Central High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at St. Lawrence University. He went on to postgraduate study at the University of Vermont (M.S.) and Harvard University, and earned a PhD at the University of California (Irvine).

He established his lab and joined the faculty in the Division of Infectious Disease at Tufts University in 1999, and moved to the University of Massachusetts in 2005, where he is now a Professor of Microbiology and Director of the Laboratory of Medical Zoology.

He has more than 50 publications on disease causing microbes transmitted by ticks and mosquitoes. He has received numerous awards for his research accomplishments including the Pfizer Research Excellence Award (Pfizer Corp.), the William Procter Award (Sigma Xi), the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Award (Am. Mus. Nat. Hist.), and the Crowell Research Scholarship (St. Lawrence University).

His work includes findings on the origins of human malaria and novel treatments for that deadly disease. He is also recognized as an authority on ticks and tick-borne disease, including Lyme disease.

His laboratory has revolutionized tick-borne disease surveillance and risk assessment with the crowd-sourced TickReport testing program.