CCEE Ph.D. students Emily Floess and Savanna Smith were selected to present at the NC State Global One Health Academy’s inaugural One Health Research Symposium. The event, which will take place on April 12 from 1-5 p.m., is designed to spark excitement and spur academic conversation and new collaborations around One Health – a framework that recognizes the interconnected nature of plant, animal, human, and environmental health.
Floess and Smith are both a part of the first cohort of Global One Health Fellows. Floess will give a talked titled “Quantifying Environmental Health Trade-offs through Modeling and Measurements,” and Smith will give a talk titled “Depth matters for microbial community function and bacterial pathogen composition in pit latrines in peri-urban Malawi.”
Floess, advised by Associate Professor Andy Grieshop, focuses on research related to energy access and transitions in developing countries, climate impacts of energy transitions, energy insecurity, and the intersection of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and indoor air pollution interventions, specifically comparing the health impacts of boiling drinking water and the health impacts of different stoves used to boil the water. She is also a recipient of a Fall 2023 Global One Health Travel Award, which will be used to support travel to collect field data in Morogoro, Tanzania.
Smith, advised by Glenn E. and Phyllis J. Futrell Distinguished Professor #2 Francis de los Reyes, researches applications of environmental biotechnology to improve global water and sanitation solutions. Savanna has completed work on pit latrine microbial communities and is currently working to use computation ecological tools to identify microbial community assembly processes governing the microbial communities responsible for biological wastewater treatment.