Sarah Olson
Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1710 University Ave, Room 287
Madison, WI 53726 USA
608-890-0337 tel
608-265-4113 fax
sholson1@wisc.edu

Sarah Olson is a doctoral student pursuing a joint degree in Population Health Sciences and Land Resources at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. Her dissertation research aims to understand how infectious disease processes may be linked to the changing ecology of landscapes. She focuses on identifying the linkages between disease epidemiology and environmental factors, such as habitat fragmentation, urban-rural interfaces, climatic effects, ecosystem diversity, and social behaviors. Her thesis will incorporate these effects and look at the impacts of deforestation on the incidence of malaria in the Amazon. Her work is a part of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) grant at SAGE and her advisor is Jonathan Patz.

Through her work, Sarah hopes to identify interventions that can target upstream environmental disease mechanisms and improve health in developing countries. Currently, she is the student representative for EcoHealth (The International Association for Ecology and Health) and an active member of the Student Section of EcoHealth.

Prior to arriving in Madison, Sarah received a B. A. in German and B. S. in Microbiology from Montana State University. As an undergraduate, she researched the regulation of pathogenic proteins in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic pathogen found in the Cystic Fibrosis lung and viruses for targeting drug delivery to specific tissues. Later, she also applied her molecular training background to investigate soil microbial diversity and ecology in order to treat soils contaminated by oil spills. Then in 2001, Sarah traveled to Africa, to teach middle and high school level science, math and physics in Ghana as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Her small-project assistance grant established a children’s library that continues to operate and serve nearly 3,000 local students. Her research background coupled to the experience in Africa attracted her to questions about the connections between landscape, development, sustainability, and health. Spring 2007, she was awarded a NSF-FACE fellowship to collaborate with researchers at the IRD in Montpellier, France.

When not at SAGE or on the computer, she is outside, trail running, mountain biking, climbing, hiking, playing ultimate, and nordic skiing.