Symposium on the Landscape Ecology of Infectious Diseases

To be held April 7th, 2008 at the annual meeting of the United States Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (US-IALE) in Madison, Wisconsin.

Co-sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence at South Dakota State University.

Who should attend? Biostatisticians, ecologists, epidemiologists, geographers, medical entomologists, microbiologists, parasitologists, and other health scientists who are interested in learning about novel geographic approaches to infectious disease research.

Featured Speakers:

Joseph Eisenberg, University of Michigan
Regional patterns of antibiotic resistance: Roads and microbial transmission in northern coastal Ecuador

Doug Goodin, Kansas State University
Landscape constraints on Hantavirus distribution in Paraguay: A hierarchical framework

Uriel Kitron, Emory University
Spatial epidemiology of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases

Jonathan Patz, University of Wisconsin
Land use and biodiversity change: Implications for disease resurgence

Randall Singer, University of Minnesota
Landscape ecology of antibiotic resistance

Lance Waller, Emory University
Quantifying pattern, exploring process: Spatial statistics and disease ecology

Michael Wimberly, South Dakota State University
The macroscope meets the microscope: Landscape ecology of infectious disease

In addition to this symposium, the US-IALE conference will feature sessions on a variety of relevant topics including satellite remote sensing, spatial analysis, land cover/land use change, and species distribution modeling.

NIH/NIAID-sponsored travel awards are being offered to graduate students from the health science fields who have an interest in geographic and ecological approaches to the study of infectious diseases and human health, but have had limited exposure to the science of landscape ecology. Click here to access the application instructions. Applications are due by February 15th, 2008.

Symposium attendees must register for the US-IALE conference. For more information, see the conference website at: http://www.cof.orst.edu/org/usiale/madison2008/

For more information, contact Mike Wimberly.