Mosquitoes are among the deadliest animals on the planet. Eliminating mosquito-borne diseases requires intimate knowledge of the ecology of mosquitoes and the pathogens they transmit. However, current techniques to study mosquitoes in the field are very labor intensive and therefore severely limited in throughput, preventing the detailed interrogation of mosquito-pathogen communities. We present two innovations aimed at overcoming this barrier. One is a citizen-science platform that allows anyone with a mobile phone to contribute to creating high-resolution mosquito maps. The other is a low-cost automated screening tool that enables dissection-free, high-throughput molecular analysis of individual mosquitoes and their pathogens. We are currently working towards the large scale deployment of these tools in public health surveillance, and hope that these approaches will provide early warnings for epidemics, and track the spread of emerging infectious diseases. 

Reinou Groen

Medical technical developments continue to evolve, however which population is benefiting? Reinou Groen (MD, MIH, PhD) has experience and continues to explore to improve health care for women in low resource or rural settings including multiple countries in sub-Saharan Africa and currently in Rural Alaska. Technical solutions for medical diagnosis, monitoring or treatment are challenging when working with limited funds, small uptake area's and limited health care personnel. This lecture will stimulate you to think outside the box, rely on work-experience demand to create technical solutions for current medical problems in low resource settings