2009 DEVELOP team poster (PDF)

Marshall’s DEVELOP student team won first place for their poster presentation at the University of Alabama, Birmingham’s (UAB) School of Public Health first annual public health research day. UAB’s Public Health Research Day showcases the best public health research to share with campus colleagues and community supporters. The DEVELOP poster was about the effort to model outbreaks of the West Nile Virus (WNV) using NASA satellite data. The study was successful in correlating collected mosquito data with environmental data to create a geospatial model of WNV risk in Illinois. The same methods can be applied to other areas to predict mosquito habitation and densities when trapping data are unavailable, making the study relevant to public health officials around the world.

DEVELOP is a NASA Science Mission Directorate Applied Sciences Program that fosters human capital development to extend science research to local communities. Student teams research NASA science capabilities relevant to community concerns and create advanced computer generated visualizations demonstrating research results.

Posted by: Dr. Jeff Luvall, Marshall DEVELOP team science mentor and Sue Estes, DEVELOP student coordinator.