A team of researchers from Penn State and Warwick University has been awarded a $1.6 million international Belmont Forum's Collaborative Research Action project by the U.S. National Science Foundation and UK Research and Innovation's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Led by Penn State researchers, the project will explore how building design, infrastructure and development decisions can help reduce malaria risk worldwide.
The project team includes four Penn State faculty members: Esther Obonyo, lead investigator and professor of engineering design and of architectural engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering; Ida Djenontin, assistant professor of geography in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences; James Mutunga, assistant professor of biology at Penn State Harrisburg; and Supraja Sudharsan, assistant teaching professor in the College of Engineering's School of Engineering Design and Innovation. Obonyo and Djenontin are also faculty members of the Institute of Energy and the Environment at Penn State.
This transdisciplinary project grew out of a real-world challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa, Obonyo said: how to keep mosquitoes out of homes without trapping heat and cutting off lifesaving, natural ventilation where wood fuel systems are used.
