Tuesday, November 30, 2021, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EST

Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, Winship Distinguished Professor in Environmental Sciences

“Bridging Science and Public Health Policy to Control Urban Mosquito-Borne Diseases”

Mosquitoes, considered the world’s deadliest animal, inhabit virtually all corners of our planet. Their need for vertebrate blood has made them perfect vehicles for pathogens such as malaria, yellow fever, Zika, dengue, or West Nile virus (just to name a few). Unfortunately, vaccines are not an option for most of those pathogens, so mosquito control (the use of chemical, environmental, or behavioral tools to prevent human-mosquito contacts) is the primary means to prevent human infection and disease. Dr. Vazquez-Prokopec’s talk will present results from over a decade of work at Emory researching mosquito biology and disease epidemiology, and present major improvements in public health policy emerging from such work (in the US and internationally). He will also outline some new directions in mosquito control with potential beneficial implications spanning from the Emory campus to the whole of the globe.