The Carlson Lab @ Yale

Up to date information for prospective fellows and students: www.carlsonlab.bio/join

🚨 NEW: Biodiversity monitoring can guide surveillance for emerging pathogens. In a new PLOS Ecosystems study led by @mdcatchen.bsky.social, we present computational algorithms to select surveillance sites that capture the most actionable data. Out now: dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

‼️ 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

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/...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 🥰

🦇🦠 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...

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...

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...

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!

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!

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."

“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...

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...

Like I said: a small part of a much bigger project, which I'll let @faustobustos.bsky.social tell you about - including a much longer-term effort to figure out how to improve WHO and PAHO case definitions / syndromic surveillance / clinical treatment for very hard to distinguish endemic arboviruses.

NEW! 🚨🦠 We trained ML algorithms to identify the clinical presentations that best distinguish pediatric dengue, chikungunya, and Zika. One notable finding: afebrile dengue may be being missed. A small part of a big project led by @faustobustos.bsky.social, out now 🔓 www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

🌍 Green gains, blue losses From 2003–2021, plants on land grew more, but ocean productivity declined, likely due to climate warming. Land is boosting Earth’s carbon uptake, but oceans are showing signs of stress. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #ClimateCrisis #SciComm 🧪

In summer, Phoenix faces dual crises: extreme heat and drug overdoses. Our latest #HealthTalks examines how those two are connected. 💻 Hear from physicians Pope Moseley and David Sklar and substance-use researcher Raminta Daniulaityte, all @asuhealthsolutions.bsky.social faculty: ow.ly/F4RF50WyOOx

A little holiday news: Evolution of antifungal resistance in the environment www.nature.com/articles/s41... This started out as a little thought way back in early 2024 between @normanvanrhijn.bsky.social and I, and turned into a full on review! We hope it proves useful to the community.

New workshop paper out today with 60 of our closest friends, providing guidance on how to design a study attributing health impacts to climate change. Hopefully this helps expand the field and start closing the representation gaps we discuss in our forthcoming work link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A new paper in The Lancet Microbe lays the groundwork for a global science-policy body to tackle pandemic threats — modeled after the IPCC for climate change 🧪🧵

Ka rawe Dave and team! 👏 This is visionary work that could reshape how the world prepares for future health crises → www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

We're launching a Global Burden of Climate Change Study with support from @yalesph.bsky.social! It's been 20 years since the last one, and at least 4 million people have died. Stay tuned for preliminary results and a more formal announcement in a month or so. #CountEveryClimateDeath

A big announcement today! A huge round of thanks to @yalesph.bsky.social for the support to launch a Global Burden of Climate Change Study. There's nowhere in the world that's better positioned to do this kind of cross-cutting work than @yaleemd.bsky.social and YCCCH. ysph.yale.edu/news-article...

New paper out modelling how the nutritional content of wild bird foods could affect disease transmission - a nice follow-up application of our Molecular Ecology study showing that food quality can affect immune function and disease tolerance. doi.org/10.1093/icb/... @durantlab.bsky.social

3️⃣ An "IPCC for pandemics" would let scientists develop consensus on key issues where the evidence is complex and sometimes contradictory - think airborne transmission, social distancing, herd immunity, school closures, pathogen origins, and most importantly, future risks - BEFORE the next pandemic.