Julianne Meisner Selected for Health Ecology Endowed Faculty Fellowship

Julianne Meisner BVM&S, MS, PhD, Assistant Professor of Global Health and Epidemiology has been selected as the inaugural holder of Marian and David Blazes Health Ecology Endowed Faculty Fellowship. The purpose of the Blazes Health Ecology Endowed Faculty Fellowship is to “…enhance the University’s ability to recruit and retain and/or provide opportunities for professional development for faculty whose research is focused on the intersection of health and the environment/ecology.” Dr. Meisner’s research and teaching in climate change, One Health, and zoonotic diseases, and their macrosocial entanglements directly address this goal. She uses innovative interdisciplinary approaches to better understand and address the complex interactions and impacts among environmental changes and human and animal health and well-being. These interactions fuel the cauldron from which pandemic diseases emerge and spread and there are few faculty members who have the kinds of cutting-edge expertise across animal health, infectious disease epidemiology and mathematical/geospatial modeling that Dr. Meisner brings to bridge these disciplines to conduct research and to support and guide others to develop innovative approaches and solutions. As evidenced by her recently being awarded both a $3.4M National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant on Disease transmission along complex human-animal networks: a novel method for improving zoonotic disease modeling and a $3.6M National Science Foundation (NSF) grant on A structural and multi-epistemic approach to modeling Brucella transmission along complex networks in Bedouin communities, Dr. Meisner is already pushing the envelope in developing innovative strategies to address some of the world’s most pressing problems and leading teams that are working in partnership with some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.