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Inaugural Team Science Summit Connects Climate and Health Experts

Lightning talks enabled attendees to maximize knowledge exchange on current projects and capabilities
News Staff | Wed, Nov 13, 2024

Understanding and responding to the complex threats to health posed by climate change requires collaboration across disciplines and communities.

To fast-track those collaborations, on November 8, Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research sponsored the Team Science Summit, the first convening of its kind at Tufts. 

The day-long event featured presentations of ongoing and emerging work in multiple departments and centers at Tufts, Tufts Medicine, and a broad group of CTSI partner institutions, all in service of expanding the university’s response to the existential threat to environmental, animal, and human health posed by climate change.

Team science summits are designed to increase awareness of translational research and opportunities for collaboration across scientific, engineering, and clinical research communities. That objective made CTSI a logical partner for the summit, according to event organizer Cheryl London, given CTSI’s mission of stimulating innovative, broadly engaged team science across the translational research spectrum. London is the director of Tufts CTSI’s research collaboration team and associate dean for research and Anne Engen and Dusty Professor of Comparative Oncology at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.

Bernard Arulanandam, vice provost for research, offered his hope that the event would facilitate new connections for attendees in service of strategies for adaptation and resilience to benefit communities locally and globally. Arulanandam is also a professor of immunology at the School of Medicine.

The summit offered three sessions spanning key issues across the spectrum of climate and health. Each session featured a series of lightning talks followed by a panel discussion. 

The initial session addressed the impact of climate on infectious disease, with topics including antimicrobial resistance, tick-borne infection, and an update from Tufts’ STOP Spillover Consortium. The second session covered the leveraging of multidisciplinary innovations to address climate and health, drawing from dietary policy and interventions, resilience for vulnerable communities, and nature-based approaches for accommodating threats from climate change. The final session focused on building resilience in the face of climate disruptions in the sectors of education, public health, and community health, among others.

Tufts Now will monitor over the coming months the emerging research presented at the summit—and research from collaborations that have been facilitated by the summit—for updates on our site.

Session 1: Impact of Climate on Emerging Infectious Disease

  • Jonathan Runstadler, Professor and Chair of Infectious Disease and Global Health, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine (Session Chair)
  • Bernard Arulanandam, Vice Provost for Research and Professor of Immunology, School of Medicine
  • Peilei Fan, Professor and Chair, Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
  • Jonathon Gass, Assistant Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine, School of Medicine, and Deputy Director, USAID Strategies to Prevent (STOP) Spillover
  • Jeffrey Griffiths, Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine, School of Medicine
  • Wendy Puryear, Senior Research Associate, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
  • Sam Telford III, Professor of Infectious Disease and Global Health and Director, New England Regional Biocontainment Laboratory, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine

Session 2: Leveraging Multidisciplinary Innovation to Address Climate and Health

  • Helen Suh, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering (Session Chair)
  • Nicole Tichenor Blackstone, Assistant Professor, Division of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
  • Eric Hines, Professor of the Practice and Kentaro Tsutsumi Faculty Fellow, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering
  • Journel Joseph, AG12, F13, Co-Founder and CEO, Intellegi
  • Paul Kirshen, Visiting Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering and Professor, School for the Environment, University of Massachusetts Boston
  • Fiorenzo Omenetto, Frank C. Doble Professor of Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering
  • Farshid Vahedifard, Professor and Louis Berger Chair, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering

Session 3: Building Resilience in the Face of Climate Change

  • Erin Coughlan de Perez, Research Director and Dignitas Professor, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (Session Chair)
  • MyDzung Chu, Assistant Professor, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Tufts Medical Center; Departments of Medicine and of Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine; Director, ADAPT, Tufts CTSI
  • Jennifer S. Ferguson, Head of User Experience and Student Success, Tisch Library
  • Evan Griffith, Ph.D. candidate, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
  • Martha Kelehan, Assistant Director of Research and Learning, Tisch Library
  • Elizabeth Marfeo, Associate Professor of Community Health, School of Arts and Sciences
  • Komal Rathod, Senior Researcher, Feinstein International Center, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
  • Erin Seaton, Senior Lecturer, Department of Education and Tisch College of Civic Life, and Co-Director, School Psychology Program, School of Arts and Sciences
  • Ramnath Subbaraman, Associate Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine, School of Medicine