The Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute will host its fourth annual spring symposium entitled “Climate, Ecology and Infectious Disease” April 16-17 at the Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.
The keynote speaker will be Ali Khan, acting deputy director for the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne and Enteric Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His professional career has focused on bioterrorism, global health and emerging infectious diseases.
Khan joined CDC and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps in 1991 as an epidemic intelligence service officer. Over the past decade, he has responded to and led numerous high profile domestic and international public health emergencies, including the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and outbreaks involving hantavirus, Ebola, avian influenza and severe acute respiratory syndrome.
The keynote lecture and dinner, open to all two-day symposium registrants, will be held April 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Georgia Center.
Other speakers include Gregory Glass, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Kristie Ebi, an independent consultant; and Morris Potter, lead scientist for epidemiology at the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition as well as faculty involved with UGA’s EID research initiative.
Disease ecology as a discipline at UGA involves more than 50 faculty across six colleges and numerous departments.