Career in focus: Epidemiologist

Sleuth Lorna Thorpe tracks infectious diseases around the globe

(CNN) -- Disease Detective Lorna Thorpe wasn't looking for a career as an epidemiologist. Instead, the job found her.

Now the scientific sleuth spends her time traveling to different areas of the world in search of epidemics.

"What I do mostly is identify why diseases move the way they do, where they exist, and try to figure out how we can alter the course of epidemics," she said.

Hot on the trail of infectious diseases like HIV, Hepatitis C, Tuberculosis and Ebola, Thorpe travels to remote regions of the world to collect data about the level of disease present and how it might spread.

AUDIO Thorpe describes what a team of epidemiologists do when they first arrive in an infected area 3.6MB / 30 sec. WAV sound Thorpe describes her experiences around the globe 3.6MB / 30 sec. WAV sound   RESOURCES • CDC -- Epidemic resource page  • Officials: Bioterror would challenge health facilities  • Les Roberts: Epidemiologist in the Congo  • Ebola hunter relishes trips inside African 'Hot Zone'  • Interactive: Trace the history of Ebola    MORE CAREERS • Air traffic controller  • FBI special agent

"When we arrive somewhere, the first thing we try to do is determine ... what is the question at hand, and is there a true problem? We try to identify if there's been a spike in cases, a sudden increase, or if there's been a slow increase over time," Thorpe said.

Armed with a laptop computer, Thorpe does a lot of field investigation work. She is always searching for any patterns in the development and spread of a given disease.

"What intrigues me most about the work that I'm doing is that we're constantly asking questions," she said. " It's a field where we focus a lot on our curiosity, and we try to answer questions by going into the field and collecting data and answering what might be useful for different countries or for affected populations."

But the investigative job, which involves a great deal of work with statistics and numbers, has its downside too.

The continual travel can be an exciting component of the job, but it can also be exhausting, Thorpe admits.

The intense work can be frustrating too, she said.

"We can identify that there is a problem and with certain resources we could fix it, but it's not always easy to get those resources in the right places."

But what the job boils down to in the end, said Thorpe, is a "battle between ourselves and the diseases or microbes that we are working with."

For example, Thorpe works to foil the ever-mutating virus that causes AIDS.

"With HIV we find over and over again that it is a very, very smart bug, and it has infected a lot of people worldwide," said Thorpe.

Her job is to find ways to outsmart the diseases with either medical remedies or societal changes.

And the focus of her work can change in the blink of an eye. After the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, Thorpe was assigned, along with other epidemiologists from around the nation, to work in New York City.

"We were flown up immediately and spread out across the city in different hospitals in the emergency rooms ... collecting information from everyone who came in," said Thorpe. "We were working very hard for the two weeks after the attack, trying to see if there's possible biological agents that were involved," she said.

Thorpe admits it was very gratifying to be able to tell New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other officials that there were no additional worries beyond the impact of the initial attacks.

To become a disease detective you must have a healthy sense of curiosity, be flexible in your lifestyle and have a good background in the biological sciences, she said.

"I don't think you have to be a number genius, but being comfortable with them is the most important part," Thorpe said.