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Aside from inflicting devastating natural disasters on often vulnerable communities, climate change can also spur outbreaks of infectious diseases like Zika , malaria and dengue fever, according to a new study by researchers at the University of  Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

From optimizing food production to feed a growing population to discovering the fundamental behaviors and processes of biopolymers, faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) are leveraging the interdisciplinary nature of the department to establish two new, innovative projects.

It’s a touchy subject — literally. Samuel Andrew Hires, assistant professor of biological sciences, wants to know how the brain learns to understand what we’re touching. Understanding how this works could one day be a boon for people who have suffered a stroke or spinal cord injury.

While strong seasonal hurricanes have devastated many of the Caribbean and Bahamian islands this year, geologic studies on several of these islands illustrate that more extreme conditions existed in the past. A new analysis published in Marine Geology shows that the limestone islands of the Bahamas and Bermuda experienced climate changes that were even more extreme than historical events. In the interest of our future world, scientists must seek to understand the complexities of linked natural events and field observations that are revealed in the geologic record of past warmer climates.

In freshwater lakes, microbes regulate the flow of carbon and determine if the bodies of water serve as carbon sinks or carbon sources. Algae and cyanobacteria in particular can trap and use carbon, but their capacity to do so may be impacted by viruses. Viruses exist amidst all bacteria, usually in a 10-fold excess, and are made up of various sizes ranging from giant viruses, to much smaller viruses known as virophages (which live in giant viruses and use their machinery to replicate and spread.)