José Lourenço, BioISI Researcher at Ciências ULisboa, co-leads the European working group of CLIMADE – Climate Amplified Disease and Epidemics consortium and will be able to greatly contribute to solutions in public health concerning mosquito-borne viruses.

CLIMADE is a consortium of scientists from all over the world, who are focused on bridging knowledge gaps, improving surveillance tools and expanding adequate interventions to decrease the impact of climate amplified diseases and epidemics. José Lourenço and Moritz Kraemer, from the University of Oxford, co-lead the European working group within CLIMADE, where they will be able to transfer all of the knowledge and skills acquired over the years on doing research in the field mosquito-borne viruses.

José Lourenço tells us exactly what will be his main tasks within the project: “Our roles will be to develop computational and data analysis tools that can track and quantify the effects that ongoing climate change is having on particular diseases, especially those caused by mosquito-borne viruses. Such tools will be able to identify which viruses, spatial regions and time windows are relevant for CLIMADE across the participating countries.” The BioISI researcher is very positive about the project as its outputs “(…) will have massive contributions to solutions in public health (…) where mosquito-borne viruses tend to have the largest burden”, says the scientist.

Besides from the valuable outcomes that the project will generate, this is also going to be a really beneficial experience for José, as he himself explains: “CLIMADE provides unique opportunities to develop and validate our expertise in climate-based modelling approaches, by widening the scenarios and data sources with which we work with. It will also expand our collaborative reach, by connecting us to global stakeholders such as scientists, policy makers and the public within the communities most affected by the diseases under study.

More about CLIMADE here

Get to know CLIMADE-Europe here

Find out more about José Lourenço’s research here 

José Lourenço [photo provided by the researcher]