- Martin Ventura uses mushrooms in his quest to turn corn stalks into a low-cost feed for crickets, an edible insect that can relieve food insecurity.
- Ramin Ghamkhar is finding ways to save energy in aquaponics systems that grow plants and fish in a closed loop.
- Jessica LeClair looks at the strategies nurses use to promote environmental justice; they often work with marginalized populations and are uniquely positioned to make a difference.
- Jonathan Lala is researching ways to identify triggers and false alarms to improve forecasts, quantify the costs of action or inaction and help communities better prepare for droughts or floods.
- Pearly Wong is finding a more nuanced understanding of what concepts like planetary health and sustainability mean in a village in Nepal.
- Ben Iuliano hopes to support “ladybug landscapes” by better understanding what supports these crucial insects and can also promote healthy agricultural crops.
These are the Spring 2020 University of Wisconsin-Madison Planetary Health Scholars, brought together to share ideas and inspire change. Each scholar was nominated for their outstanding research into ways to improve the health of humans and the planet. They come from the Colleges of Engineering, Letters & Science, Nursing, and Agricultural and Life Sciences as well as the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Their Planetary Health five-minute mini lectures describing their projects and their goals are available now at ghi.wisc.edu/planetary-health/.
Working together and with their faculty mentors, the graduate students understand that while humans have thrived, they are also changing the planet. When the environment suffers, resources vanish and systems shut down. They are among a new generation of scholars finding connections between human health and the health of the earth, finding resilience and looking for a new way forward.
The Planetary Health Graduate Scholarship Program was launched in January 2020 to bring graduate and professional students and their faculty advisors together from across disciplines. By meeting each other and learning each other’s work, they have a chance to reassess, collaborate, learn new cools and consider their own research in a new light.
Climate and health pioneer Jonathan Patz, M.D., MPH, director of the Global Health Institute and the John P. Holton Chair for Health and the Environment, leads the program. It’s funded with a gift from alumni Dave and Sarah Epstein, who are also members of the UW-Madison Global Health Institute Board of Visitors. The program is co-administered through GHI and the Nelson Institute.
May 6, 2020