Interview with Prof. Rita Colwell
Prof. Rita Colwell’s career has been dedicated to providing safe water to rural communities, with a focus on cholera, after studying marine microbiology. Through her work, she and her team developed a model that employs satellite sensing to monitor the environmental factors associated with cholera. Prof. Colwell is also Director of the National Science Foundation and is a proponent of an educated society and increasing the number of women and minorities in STEM. For her, the most exciting aspect of her current work is assisting countries such as Yemen in predicting the risk of cholera outbreaks, however she believes one challenge that remains is the poor understanding of how effective the use of satellite sensos are for predicting the risk of such water borne diseases.
