Hopkins on the Hill: How Can Weather Prediction Save Lives and Money?
Brought to you by Hopkins at Home, Hopkins on the Hill, and the Johns Hopkins University Office of Research
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM
There's an old joke that "Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." Dr. Zaitchik wants to do something about it, and with weather patterns changing all over the world, we have to do something about it. His team doesn't try to change the weather, but they do try to understand and predict the ways in which weather and climate impact things we all care about: our food, our health, our safety. Come hear about Dr. Zaitchik’s recent projects, ranging from predicting flash droughts and outbreaks of enteric diseases, to enhancing the value of the JH Coronavirus Dashboard for COVID-19 research.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
Benjamin Zaitchik, PhD, is an associate professor of earth and planetary sciences. His research is directed at understanding, managing, and coping with climatic and hydrologic variability. Understanding variability requires examination of the natural processes that drive climate and surface change. Managing variability relates to our ability to control anthropogenic influences on climate and hydrology at the local, regional, and global scales. Coping with variability includes improved forecast systems and methods of risk assessment. In each of these areas of research he employs a combination of observation-both in situ and remotely sensed-and numerical modeling techniques. This includes work on fundamental atmospheric and hydrological processes as well as applications to water resources, agriculture, energy, and human health. Prior to joining JHU, Ben was a research associate at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. 
Keri N. Althoff, PhD, is the Provost’s Fellow for Research Communication and an associate professor of epidemiology in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Medicine. As a Provost’s Fellow, she is expanding our institutional capacity to share research achievements. Dr. Althoff's research interest is aging in the context of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. She serves as the co-director of the North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design (NA-ACCORD), which is a collaboration of more than 20 longitudinal HIV cohort studies of adults with individual-level harmonized data. She earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Iowa, then her MPH and PhD from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to becoming an accomplished epidemiologist, Dr. Althoff worked in public relations and journalism. Her skills and passion for sharing research with broad audiences make her the perfect host for Hopkins on the Hill at Home 2021.
The perspectives and opinions expressed by the speaker(s) during this program are those of the speaker(s) and not, necessarily, those of Johns Hopkins University and the scheduling of any speaker at an alumni event or program does not constitute the University’s endorsement of the speaker’s perspectives and opinions.