Come see our Urban Malaria Team at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) 2025 meeting! We have an exciting line-up of talks and posters on the effects of climate, control, urban heterogeneity, and climate change on malaria transmission in cities!

We are hosting an exciting symposium at this year's American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) meeting next week in Toronto titled "Malaria in the Metropolis"! This symposium focuses on leveraging international collaboration to control mosquito-borne diseases in cities!

Happy Halloween! Sending love, empathy, hope, resilience, harmony, self-care, and general good vibes to triumph over darkness from the EcoDyn VP Lab Care Bears Stare this Halloween 2025!

We received an NOA for a new NIH Training grant: "Building an India-Africa Network to Support Research and Control of Urban Malaria"! This network brings together experts from African, Indian, and Western institutions to build rapid capacity to address this emerging threat in Africa. More soon!

My PhD student Anna Shattuck just passed her comprehensive exam with flying colors to become a PhD candidate! Go Anna! Well done 😊.

“I wish they had computed a bit less and thought a bit more”

As heartbreaking news continues to emerge from central Texas, @chastenbuttigieg.bsky.social and I are thinking of everyone affected and grateful for the extraordinary work of first responders. Here are some ways all of us can help:

The manuscript offers new insights into spatial and temporal patterns of urban microclimate, emphasizing contrasts between dry- and wet-bulb temperatures and indoor and outdoor microenvironment. We would be interested to hear your feedback!

New preprint from our group on how indoor and outdoor microclimates vary across Indian cities and seasonally: essopenarchive.org/doi/full/10.... @mcwimberly.bsky.social and Yusuf Jamal provide data identifying the location and seasonal timing of extreme wet bulb temperature in urban settings.

When I am not professoring, I am momming. Spent the weekend in Niagra, New York at the TCS Niagra Falls Summer Showndown AAU youth hockey tournament. My son's AA 12U team took home the championship. Great way to end the spring hockey season.

Postdoc position available at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine!

Another preprint from our group online! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... We find socioeconomic disparities and water management practices influence urban malaria incidence and prevention behaviors in Surat and Ahmedabad, two cities of India in the state of Gujurat.

New preprint out from our group! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We find that relative humidity systematically shifts the temperature dependence of a key malaria vector. These effects are also likely important for aquatic insects more generally, and for predicting their responses to climate change.

Celebrating @mosquitohunting.bsky.social today in lab meeting and her recent publication! www.frontiersin.org/journals/mal...

New paper out by @mosquitohunting.bsky.social! www.frontiersin.org/journals/mal... This paper explores how variation in mosquito diversity, feeding behavior, vector competence, seasonality, and vector-pathogen interactions shape the transmission, persistence, and evolution of human malaria!

Congratulations to Dr. Mike Newberry, a PhD student in my group who graduated officially from the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia on May 8th 😊! Well done, and congratulations, Mike!

I am very excited to participate in a keynote lecture by Ray Huey, one of the fathers of thermal and physiological ecology, today during Evo Day here at Cornell. His work is the foundation of our work, and it is awesome to see it presented live today 😊.

New preprint out from our group led by @infectiouschill.bsky.social! Anna compares how various species distribution models perform at predicting the relatively recent invasion of the Asian tiger mosquito, a significant pest species, in Suffolk County, New York. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Heading home to the U.S. today. Here is the almost complete team from the Surat Municipal Corporation...out for a team dinner. We are missing Mr. Suthar and Dr. Dhwani, who were busy for World Malaria Day. Thank you as always for your excellent work, your collaboration, and friendship.

Also, this tractor...why can't we have nice things in the United States 😊. This makes me happy.

We placed the final 144th logger today in Surat with @mcwimberly.bsky.social and colleagues from the Surat Municipal Corporation. Here are some pics from the field 😊.

World Malaria Day. Progress has been made on malaria elimination but it remains a killer. Changing climate, invasive mosquitoes, and limited global funding are threatening efforts. Today, we are in India working to better understand the effects of climate on urban malaria. @mcwimberly.bsky.social

Spent World Malaria Day with @ecodynvplab.bsky.social and colleagues in Surat, India studying mosquito microhabitats in urban construction sites. Best wishes to all who work to control and eliminate this terrible disease- your efforts are greatly appreciated!

We set another 36 loggers across construction sites today to monitor the microclimate mosquitoes experience during the pre-monsoon season. Here are some pics of construction trucks because they make me happy. Why can't we have colorful trucks in the U.S.? @mcwimberly.bsky.social

Pics from Surat today. Super hot and humid in the pre-monsoon season here...it was a sweat fest. We have placed 72 loggers thus far throughout construction sites. Also, we found a lot of mosquitoes in these sites, especially in the unfinished underground parks. @mcwimberly.bsky.social

Spent the day replacing batteries and reprogramming loggers so they are ready to be placed across construction sites throughout Surat. Looking forward to setting them the rest of the week. It is the beginning of the pre-monsoon season here, so very hot and relatively dry. @mcwimberly.bsky.social

Heading back to India. We will quantify the microclimate mosquitoes experience in construction sites, as they are potentially important climate refugia during the hot, dry pre-monsoon season for malaria and dengue mosquitoes. Potentially, my last trip due to NIH funding freezes threatening Cornell.

Headed to the University of Georgia to give a seminar in the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases and for one of my Ph.D. student's defense. I am very excited to see my former colleagues and friends. And, it's spring break, so bringing the family 😊.

"Mean daily temperatures predict the thermal limits of malaria transmission better than hourly rate summation" new paper now out in NatComm, led by @martashocket.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s414...

New paper out! A common computational approach to predict organismal fitness and distributions in the field could vastly overpredict the potential range of thermal suitability for malaria transmission relative to performance characterized at constant temperatures: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Powerful statement from President Kotlikoff at Cornell. Thank you for stepping up. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/o... "Our colleges and universities are cradles of democracy and bulwarks against autocracy."

Boom. Accepted for publication in Nature Communications. This paper has been a journey, but it is done. Here, we explore the use of constant temperature experiments to predict the thermal suitability for malaria transmission in a diurnally fluctuating environment. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Very excited to be giving a seminar tomorrow at Purdue University on the climate drivers of malaria transmission in urban environments by the invasive malaria vector Anopheles stephensi! Thank you for the invitation 😊. I also flew on the smallest plane ever to get here, which was an adventure!

Cancer research has never been a partisan issue. Diabetes research has never been a partisan issue. Offering hope to families struggling with disease has never been a partisan issue. Until now. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The world is complicated—but propaganda hates complexity. Oversimplification reduces deep, nuanced issues into black-and-white, fake “easy” solutions. The goal? Make you stop thinking and start reacting. 🧵

🧪 The NSF director is lying to you. Let’s fact check 7 claims from yesterday’s letter to the community, while pointing out 3 critical omissions. 🧵

Last day in India. Thank you to my Indian collaborators for another wonderful trip. Research in the field is my happy place and I have learned a lot from my friends in the National Institute of Malaria Research and the Ahmedabad and Surat Municipal corporations. Bye for now 😊.

My happy place as a researcher trying to understand how the world works is in the field...where it all matters.

And some fun pictures from the field in Surat, India.

Day 5 in Surat, India. Today was an An. subpictus day, which was most of what we caught across the board from human and mixed dwellings, animal sheds, and construction sites. Usually in dark corners with things up against the wall. The new backpack aspirators are working well 😊.

Day 4 from Surat, India. Sampled a lot of Anopheles subpictus from a very productive cattleshed, one An. annularis, and some An. stephensi from mixed dwellings and a construction site. Also saw many Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus resting.

Day 3 today from Surat, India. Did not catch as many different species, but did sample a new one this trip...Anopheles barbirostris...prefers to develop in flowing water, can transmit malaria, and feeds on cattle and humans. Including a pic of bloodfed mossies resting in cobwebs in a 50-gallon drum.

Day 2 today from Surat, India. We visited human dwellings, cattle sheds, construction sites. We caught Anopheles stephensi, annularus, pulcherrimus, subpictus, and culicifacies...and Culex quinquefasciatus. An. stephensi and Ae. aegypti are down in numbers this time of year.

Day 1 in the field with team Surat Municipal Corporation. Collecting An. stephensi from human dwellings, cattle sheds, and construction sites in India this week 😊.

My PhD student Anna Shattuck won an Atkinson Graduate Research award to support her research on how disease carrying mosquitoes adapt to climate change. Congratulations and well deserved! Go Anna! news.cornell.edu/stories/2025...

2nd day of the Indo-US Climate Change Impacts Conference. We discussed as the planet warms, extreme weather events costing $ billions are increasing, and the poor are the least resilient. In 2024, the U.S. spent $182.7 billion. 2025 is on track to cost more with the fires in CA.

First day of the Indo-US Climate Change conference. We discussed the impacts of climate change on health, from heat stress, air pollution, cardiovascular and respiratory health, and vector-borne diseases. Missing our U.S. NIH partners that were not allowed to participate.

Here is an advertisement for my talk tomorrow by the conference organizers. Lovely that they used a pic 10 years younger 😆. Haven't changed at all 😉.

Made it to Ahmedabad after a very interesting detour! Looking forward to participating in the Indo-US Climate Change Impacts on Occupational and Environmental Health hosted by the Indian Council of Medical Research and the National Institute of Occupational Health. www.cliconoeh.com