Talk by Courtney Murdock (Entomology, Cornell University)

Mosquito-borne diseases remain one of the world’s most pressing public health challenges yet predicting where and when outbreaks will occur is becoming increasingly difficult as our climate and cities change. In India, rapid urban growth, rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, and more frequent heat waves are transforming the environments where mosquitoes and the diseases they carry thrive. While malaria has declined dramatically in many Indian cities thanks to sustained public health efforts, dengue has continued to increase, raising important questions about how climate, urbanization, and mosquito control interact to shape disease risk. Our research brings together ecologists, epidemiologists, climate scientists, mathematicians, economists, and public health practitioners from the United States and India to better understand these changing risks. We are investigating how local climate conditions, human movement, and the built environment, particularly construction sites where migrant workers often live, and mosquitoes can persist year-round, contribute to the spread of malaria in rapidly growing cities. By combining field observations with climate data and mathematical models, we aim to identify where mosquitoes are most likely to survive and where disease transmission is most likely to occur before outbreaks begin. Working closely with municipal health departments and national partners, we are developing practical tools that can help guide mosquito surveillance and control of the places and times where they will have the greatest impact. Ultimately, this work will support India’s malaria elimination goals while providing a framework for protecting rapidly urbanizing communities around the world from mosquito-borne diseases in a changing climate.

Courtney C. Murdock is currently an associate professor in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University (2020-present). She received a B.S. in Biology and a minor in Spanish literature at the University of Michigan (1997-2001). She then went on to pursue a PhD in disease ecology at the School of Natural Resources and Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan (2002-2009). Murdock was a post-doc in the Departments of Biology and Entomology at Pennsylvania State University (2009-2014), after which she joined the University of Georgia as an assistant professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and the Odum School of Ecology (2015-2020). A consistent theme of Murdock’s research program has been the application of ecological and evolutionary theory to inform our understanding of mosquito-borne disease transmission, as well as our disease management strategies. Research conducted in Murdock’s group spans multiple scales of ecological organization (from within host processes up to population and community-level dynamics) involving a combination of experiments in the lab and under semi-field conditions, as well as descriptive field studies and mathematical modeling to provide insight into relative mechanisms driving mosquito-borne disease transmission and control in the field.