Jayne Wiarda is a doctoral candidate at Iowa State University and a research fellow in the Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research Unit at the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa. Ms. Wiarda has performed research in multiple animal species including pigs, cattle, white-tailed deer, elk, and mongooses. Her current research evaluates the effects of early-life intervention strategies on intestinal health status and utilizes single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to identify and characterize lymphocyte communities in the pig intestine.