Alex Potter
Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit (WRBU) Research Technician
Mr. Alex Potter is part of a team managing an interactive disease vector mapping website (vectormap.si.edu) while also curating specimens of the National arthropod collections housed at the Smithsonian Institution (NMNH). This team preserves valuable data associated with museum specimens, scientific literature, and ongoing field collections to inform vector borne disease risk mitigation strategies.
Mr. Potter currently provides technical assistance for the reorganization and reclassification of the United States National Museum (USNM) Culicoides collection as well as the larger Ceratopogonidae family. He began as a College Qualified Leaders (CQL) student in the summer of 2017, returning to WRBU after his graduation from Kalamazoo College in 2018, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in biology. Mr. Potter’s senior thesis research (completed at WRBU), focused on climate change and arbovirus dynamics. His recent research interests include the standardization of entomological surveillance data, the digitization of museum specimens, and mapping with GIS.