Invitation to Public Keynote “Pandemic Influenzas: Space, Genetics, and Landscapes“

Prof. Dr. Michael Emch is W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Geography and Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). He is a member of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Ecology Lab at UNC and he leads the Spatial Health Research Group. He has published more than 180 papers and two books mostly on infectious diseases including cholera, malaria, respiratory infections, tuberculosis, and COVID-19. He has received more than 20 million dollars in research grants to study diverse topics such as the role of population-environment drivers in pathogen evolution, how social connectivity contributes to disease incidence, and using environmental indicators to predict infectious disease outbreaks. He has served on panels for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Academy of Sciences and he has given many speeches on infectious diseases at institutions in more than 20 countries including the United States Senate.