(EDITORS/REPORTERS: For this journalist-only luncheon, please contact Blaine Friedlander, Cornell Press Office, [email protected] for specific location information.)
Newswise — Consider the environment’s connection to human health, when Cornell professors Drew Harvell and Laura Harrington explain how their research has revealed the impact of climate change on our own health and wellbeing. In fact with the right conditions, New York City could face this summer a new, serious disease – chikungunya – which is carried by mosquitoes.
The professors have modeled how chikungunya could arrive at Kennedy Airport this summer via a human carrier from overseas. If a domestic mosquito bites that person, the professors have modeled New York City infection rates and potential spread of the disease.
On Tuesday, May 8, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Midtown Manhattan, Harvell (professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and Associate Director of the Atkinson Center) and Laura Harrington (professor of entomology) will sit down with journalists for a frank conversation on problematic, global environmental hot spots on land and in the ocean and the likely dangers to humanity.
Both Harvell and Harrington are faculty in Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. Harrington studies the ecology, epidemiology and management of mosquito-borne disease vectors. Harvell examines the ecology of wildlife disease in the oceans. Like the so-called “canary in the coal mine,” evaluating new disease outbreaks in the oceans could be a sentinel of future environmental tipping points.
About Inside Cornell: This event is part of a monthly series held in New York City featuring high-interest experts working at Cornell University's centers in Manhattan, Ithaca and around the world. The free, catered lunch sessions are on-the-record, and media members are welcome to record video and audio as desired.
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