PHS Monday Seminar Featuring Nicholas DeFelice, PhD
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PHS WARF Room 726
Nicholas DeFelice, PhD, Associate Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He will be speaking on Climate-Informed Infectious Disease Forecasts for Public Health Action.
Abstract: West Nile virus (WNV) is the leading cause of domestically acquired arboviral disease. Ecological and laboratory studies have demonstrated that temperature modulates West Nile virus (WNV) transmission dynamics and spillover infection to humans. Here we develop a model depicting WNV transmission dynamics, which we optimize using a data assimilation method and two observed data streams, mosquito infection rates and reported human WNV cases. The coupled model-inference framework is then used to generate retrospective ensemble forecasts of historical WNV outbreaks. We then explore whether including temperature forcing in a model of WNV transmission improves WNV forecast accuracy relative to a baseline model without temperature forcing. We then evaluate these forecasts in real time to assess how observational reporting delays in mosquito WNV assay results and human medical records were associated with forecast accuracy.
Bio: Nicholas DeFelice, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine and at the Arnhold Institute for Global Health at Mount Sinai, and is a member of the Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research. Dr. DeFelice studies the environmental determinants of infectious disease transmission. He develops mathematical models that quantify the burden of disease attributable to poor infrastructure and other environmental exposures, along with systems to forecast infectious disease outbreaks. His current research focuses on forecasting West Nile virus outbreaks. More broadly, his research is addressing how climate change influences human health and the environmental solutions that can promote positive health outcomes.
Dr. DeFelice holds a PhD in Environmental Science and Engineering at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he also completed his Master of Science in Environmental Engineering. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, his postdoctoral training was completed at Columbia University with a focus on climate and health.