Scientist in the Spotlight—Fabulous Fungi and Forecasting Disease

These activities are designed for those of all ages.

Fabulous fungi

Join Renee Johansen, with the Lab’s Bioenergy and Biome Science group, while she shares information on the strange world of fungi. Behaving differently from animals or even plants, what you typically see of them above the ground or outside of their host only tells part of the story. Have fun as she offers up their many shapes and microscopic features, and shares the role they play in our planet’s carbon cycle.

Forecasting disease

Nick Generous, with the Lab's Information Systems and Modeling group, will be available to chat about how new social media tools help researchers improve disease forecasting. Understanding influenza or other infectious disease dynamics and forecasting their impact is fundamental for developing prevention and mitigation strategies. To do this, researchers at Los Alamos (including Generous) combined modern data assimilation methods with Wikipedia access logs and CDC influenza-like illness reports to create a weekly forecast for seasonal influenza. These techniques can be applied to other illnesses as well.