"Ecological perspectives on managing human diseases" Dr. Kenichi Okamoto

Dr. Kenichi Okamoto
Postdoctoral Associate
Yale University

 

Abstract

Community ecologists have long studied how individual organisms interact with each other in multispecies communities. Yet the basic principles of community ecology and population biology also underlie the dynamics of a surprising array of human diseases. Using early-stage cancer dynamics and vector-borne diseases as case studies, I show how the conceptual insights and theoretical frameworks developed in ecology can not only suggest novel approaches to improving human health, but also guide the implementation of public health responses. Moreover, whereas ecologists often study the interactions of populations without regard to evolutionary change within the constituent species, I argue that elucidating the link between ecological and evolutionary dynamics is critical to effectively applying ecological perspectives to manage human diseases. Finally, I present a research program integrating mathematical theory and empirical data from experimental evolution that seeks to improve our ability to understand the eco-evolutionary dynamics of diseases.

Biography

Kenichi Okamoto received his bachelor's degree in statistics from the University of Chicago, and his PhD in Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles, where his dissertation developed theory for integrating ecological and evolutionary dynamics. Following a postdoc at the Department of Entomology at North Carolina State University funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, he is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. Okamoto's research focuses on the dynamics of infectious diseases, the ecology and evolution of consumer-resource interactions, and the evolution of cross-species aggression.