‼️ New preprint: By solving a paradox in graph theory, we show that specialist symbionts constrain ecosystem structure, drive biodiversity, and face high extinction risk. With @jbyoder.org and @ctrlalttim.com: 🎉 Specialists drive biodiversity scaling in symbiotic relationships
The Carlson Lab @ Yale
@carlsonlab.bsky.social
We work on planetary problems. Currently: counting climate change-related deaths; pandemic risk assessment in a changing biosphere; data, science, and vaccine access during public health emergencies. 👉 carlsonlab.bio
NEW PREPRINT! 🦠⚖️🌡️ The Pandemic Agreement is the first global health treaty to name climate change, and behind the scenes, the UNFCCC was a source of both inspiration and conflict. Cristina Arnés-Sanz and team tracked climate issues through three years of negotiations: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Our 2025 paper 'Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change' was featured on UNDRR's PreventionWeb: www.preventionweb.net/publication/...
Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change
This study highlights the growing body of evidence that quantifies the health losses directly attributable to anthropogenic climate change, with emphasis on mortality, illness and wider well-being imp...
preventionweb.net
New work in progress on primate reservoirs of arboviruses - when do they actually matter for transmission? and where will climate change take them - on display at the Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases Symposium last Friday!
A long-term dream of mine has been to bridge @viralemergence.org's work on AI/ML-driven viral risk assessment with AI/ML-driven work on drug discovery. This would make a great topic for this fellowship here at Yale! If you're interested in applying, reach out. medicine.yale.edu/biomedical-d...
Yale University and Boehringer Ingelheim Biomedical Data Science Fellowship Program
Yale University, in partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, launched in 2021 a Biomedical Data Science
medicine.yale.edu
We're looking for a full-stack developer! Help us build the best open data platforms for pandemic prediction in the world. Probably a short-term contract, but if you're looking for a full-time gig, let's talk. Inquire within: www.viralemergence.org/blog/were-hi...
We’re Hiring! — Verena
The Verena Institute is looking for a full stack developer or full stack development team (hereafter, the “Supplier”) to assist with the maintenance, documentation, and development of the Pathogen H...
viralemergence.org
Exciting news to start 2026: for the first time ever, the PHAROS repository for wildlife disease surveillance is a journal-recommended home for your archived data! Thanks to Integrative and Comparative Biology for taking the leap with us 🦠🔢➡️🌎💻💫 academic.oup.com/icb/pages/Ge...
General_Instructions
Instructions for Authors Authors who publish their papers under our open access model or who are NIH-funded will have their paper automatically depos
academic.oup.com
NEW!🦠🌡️ : What makes a "dengue year" like 2023-24? It's hard to pin down an answer unless you can homogenize out all the spatial variation and temporal trends. But once you do, the answer is pretty clean: dengue years are hot years. Last one of the year (unless...?) 👉 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
🚨 We're about to start reviewing applications, but there's still time to reach out for our postdoc position on climate change impact attribution! If you have experience with attribution science or climate epidemiology, and want to help us launch the Global Burden of Climate Change Study, reach out!
Really interesting new paper on the rising health effects of our warming world with some great data visualizations. Full paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change - Nature Climate Change
The authors assess the growing field of climate change health impact attribution. They show literature bias towards direct heat effects and extreme weather in high-income countries, highlighting the l...
nature.com
Believe it or not, @alexandraphelan.bsky.social and I started talking about the concept for this workshop 5? 6? years ago, so it was absolutely amazing to finally pull this off with exactly the right people, especially in a year when it feels like we're taking a lot of L's on actionable science 🥰
Last week's workshop on scenario development for pandemic risk assessment was a critical step forward for our broader effort on the establishment of an "IPCC for pandemics," with the UN Foundation and the National Academy of Medicine. Thank you to all of our amazing speakers and participants!
🦇🦠 New preprint - in a long-term effort led by the amazing @mayajuman.bsky.social, we've shown that the ML tools developed by @viralemergence.org let us efficiently screen museum collections for pathogens with pandemic potential 🎉🔓 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Museum collections and machine learning guide discovery of novel coronaviruses and paramyxoviruses
Natural history museum collections are valuable but underutilized resources for viral discovery, offering opportunities to test hypotheses about viral occurrence across space, time, and taxonomic grou...
biorxiv.org
Last week, we were lucky to host an international workshop on Pandemic Risk Scenarios for the 21st Century, with generous support from PAX sapiens and @viralemergence.org. Lots of lessons learned from climate and biodiversity science on how to design useful models and imagine better futures!
Check it out! New work in which we undertake the first systematic look at the science of health impact attribution, plus a great thread by @colincarlson.bsky.social below on attribution science and what we tried to accomplish with this study.
🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
3️⃣ During the pandemic & at baseline, younger adults, men, & Hispanic & Black individuals have more contacts & are at greater disease risk These geographic & social differences in risk can help target public health resources & surveillance 📢 /11
2️⃣ Contact patterns vary across US counties regardless of disease 🌎 Based on population density, we expected urban counties 🏙️ to have higher contact rates than rural ones 🚜 This is true at baseline, but not during the pandemic, when urban areas were more responsive to gathering restrictions /10
1️⃣ Early in the pandemic, contact varied over time 📆 However, contact and COVID-19 incidence were anti-correlated during this period (when disease went ⬆️, contacts went ⬇️) Thus, after controlling for disease, there was no longer any systematic variation in contact over time /8
Our paper on US contact patterns is now published in The Lancet Digital Health! doi.org/10.1016/j.la... Thanks to my brilliant coauthors @zsusswein.bsky.social, @vcolizza.bsky.social, & @bansallab.bsky.social for their help with this project. Read on for an overview of our findings... 🧵
Want to do a postdoc with our group on something related to biodiversity conservation, policy, and the environment? Reach out - applications are open for the Donnelley fellowship! yibs.yale.edu/donnelley-fe...
Gaylord Donnelley Postdoctoral Environmental Fellowship
The Donnelley Postdoctoral Fellowship supports postdoctoral fellowships for research in biodiversity or a combination of biodiversity with conservation and public policy. The Fellowship was created to...
yibs.yale.edu
New preprint! 🥳🎉 We looked at viral coinfection patterns at the largest scale ever in wildlife. We found a strong association among CoVs, PMVs, and influenza A, and higher coinfection rates in wildlife trade; plus, evidence that bats accumulate persistent infections. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We're hiring! We have funding for a 1-year (to start with, but hopefully longer) postdoc working on climate change impacts on health broadly, and helping us launch gbcc.study. Strong skills in epi methods or attribution science needed. Can potentially be remote. Please share!
The Global Burden of Climate Change Study
gbcc.study
We may have a one-year postdoctoral position opening! We're looking for someone with experience in attribution science OR very strong skills in climate epidemiology to come help us launch a Global Burden of Climate Change Study. Remote possible for the right person; aim to raise $ for a second year.
We may have a one-year postdoctoral position opening! We're looking for someone with experience in attribution science OR very strong skills in climate epidemiology to come help us launch a Global Burden of Climate Change Study. Remote possible for the right person; aim to raise $ for a second year.
Our "Joshua tree is CAM" paper is finally out: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Data collection started back in 2021, when we saw weird results in some RNAseq that made me stop and wonder if Joshua trees, long thought to be C3, were actually...CAM!
Cryptic CAM photosynthesis in Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia, Y. jaegeriana)
Joshua trees are long-lived perennial monocots native to the Mojave Desert in North America. Composed of two species, Yucca brevifolia and Y. jaegeriana (Asparagaceae), Joshua trees are imperiled by...
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
We had a great time at #ESA2025! Disclaimer: Ekiben sandwich not included in conference registration or ESA membership
"Conditional cash transfer could substantially contribute towards reducing AIDS-related inequalities and achieving the AIDS-related Sustainable Development Goal."
Cash transfer reduced AIDS incidence and AIDS-related mortality in Brazil. Score one for team cash transfers. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I am really excited to be a part of this team. We took our time writing this, putting a lot of thought into how our journeys as #NativesInSTEM were affected by different aspects of Universities and looking for commonalities across the world. I hope folks in academia appreciate this work.
New article led by Tara McAllister & co-authored by Lelani Walker, @niiyokamigaabaw.bsky.social, myself, Bradley Moggridge, Serena Naepi, Brittany Kamai and @napaaqtuk.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
“We find that all pathways may experience global shortages of up to 12 minerals by 2100 under the moderate scenario.” www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Navigating energy transition solutions for climate targets with minerals constraint - Nature Climate Change
The decarbonization of energy systems requires access to minerals that are critical for manufacturing low-carbon technologies. Here researchers show that meeting climate targets could be impeded by ma...
nature.com
This was just a fun side quest, but if our lab thought about this more in the future, I'd want to revisit some of the ideas from this 2020 preprint - rare or unique clinical presentations can improve syndromic surveillance for emerging diseases among endemic ones www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...