Paula Ribeiro Prist
EcoHealth Alliance & ex-officio member of Health Knowledge-Action Network
Dr. Prist is a Senior Research Scientist at EcoHealth Alliance, part of the Conservation and Health team. Her work focuses on understanding how the landscape structure derived from different land use changes can affect the transmission risk of zoonotic diseases. She is especially interested in trying to understand the effects of landscape configuration and of forest restoration on hosts, reservoirs, and vectors of zoonotic diseases, so that we can be able to manage landscapes to make them “healthier” for people. Dr. Prist holds a Master’s and Ph.D. in ecology from the Department of Ecology of University of São Paulo, a postdoc from the same institution, and a Bachelors in Biology from Mackenzie University. Originally from Brazil, Paula’s long-term plan is to contribute to the development of high-quality research that allows the management of tropical landscapes, either in the form of legal deforestation or forest restoration, in order to create landscapes with a low transmission risk for zoonotic diseases.