Professor
Duke University, North Carolina, United States
I am a Professor of Population Studies and Global Environmental Health at Duke University with joint appointments in the Duke Global Health Institute and the Nicholas School of the Environment. My primary training is in biostatistics, spatial analysis, and demography from UNC-Chapel Hill, with additional training in population-environment dynamics, environmental epidemiology, and Bayesian spatial statistics. Given my quantitative expertise and broad content experience, I have been able to collaborate effectively across several disciplines and combine methods from epidemiology, demography, environmental science, and genomics. I am well-qualified to provide mentorship to scientists aiming to build on their skills to enhance their career contributions to research and public health. I have had the fortune of 20 years of experience leading large, multi-institutional, and interdisciplinary research teams to study how human-environment dynamics influence human health in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). I currently lead multiple areas of research: (1) chemical exposure from artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) in Ecuador and Peru; (2) seasonal weather patterns or extremes, migration and transportation networks, and land cover change on vector-borne disease risk in Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil; (3) development, validation, and implementation of a malaria early warning system (MEWS) in Panama and Honduras, officially adopted in August 2025 by both Ministries of Health, representing the first MEWS forecasting system for any government; and (4) a study to evaluate the impact of migration through the Darien on novel malaria genotypes, vector composition and behavior, and risk factors for infection. My work has led to seminal papers on the effectiveness of interventions against malaria in the Amazon (Janko et al., 2023), the relationship between deforestation and Ny. darlingi (Vittor et.al. 2009), and the extent of mercury contamination that was used to justify a State of Emergency in Peru (Diringer et.al 2015; Weinhouse et.al. 2020). My transdisciplinary experience has led me to serve on several scientific advisory boards, including The Nature Conservancy's One Conservancy Science Program (OSC), the Population-Environment Research Network, the NC One Health Collaborative, Forecasting Healthy Futures, and the Technical Advisory Group for TRIPARTITE to develop standardized One Health Field Competencies.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2026
2:15 PM - 2:30 PM PDT