My academic focus is on global health, health policy, infectious diseases, environmental changes, and population health. Our research primarily addresses how health policies and environmental changes affect health outcomes worldwide, with a special emphasis on population living in impoverished conditions.

Our recent publications in journals like Nature, Lancet, and JAMA Pediatrics include studies on the impact of tropical cyclones on population health and the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 infectivity in children. These works are part of my broader effort to understand the health consequences of environmental and policy changes.

Collaborating with trainees and leading academics in global health, our group's research interests also involve analyzing the relationship between health aid policies and their effects on child health and family planning in sub-Saharan Africa. My research typically aims to inform policy decisions and deepen the understanding of complex health dynamics.

Current projects focus on the health and social effects of pollution and natural hazards, as well as the extended implications of war on health, particularly among children and women.

Specific projects we have ongoing include:

• What do global warming and demographic shifts imply for the population exposure to extreme heat and extreme cold events?

• What are the implications of tropical cyclones (hurricanes) on delivery of basic health services such as vaccinations in low-income contexts?

• What effect do malaria control programs have on child mortality?

• What is the evidence that foreign aid for health is good diplomacy?

• How can we compare health inequalities across countries? Is health in the U.S. uniquely unequal? 

   

Shauna Somerville's research program is focused on plant-pathogen interactions using the powdery mildew disease of Arabidopsis thaliana as a basis for study. Her research group studies nonhost resistance, which is defined operationally as resistance exhibited by all individuals of a plant species to all members of a given pathogen species. Unlike classical resistance deployed in plant breeding, nonhost resistance is both broad-spectrum in action and durable in the field. Analysis of this highly effective form of resistance has highlighted the importance the cell wall as the first line of defense against pathogen entry into plant cells. In addition, Shauna Somerville's lab was an early participant in the use of the microarray technology for gene expression profiling in plants, particularly in plant-pathogen interactions.

Shauna Somerville received her undergraduate training in Genetics (1976) and her M.Sc. in Plant Breeding (1978) at the University of Alberta, and her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Agronomy and Plant Physiology (1981). She has held positions concurrently at the DOE-Plant Research Laboratory and in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Michigan State University (1982-1993), and is currently on staff at the Carnegie Institution, Department of Plant Biology (1994-present).

Shauna Somerville serves on the editorial boards of Genome Biology (1999-present) and Molecular Plant Pathology (2002-present). She also serves on the advisory boards for a number of plant genomics projects, including the Functional Genomics of Roots (2002-2006), the Functional Genomics of Grape Diseases Program in Chile (2002-2006), Rice Oligonucleotide Arrays (2004-2006) and Potato Functional Genomics (2005-2007). She was a Risø Fellow for Risø National Laboratory, Denmark (2002-2005) and currently serves on Genome Canada's Science and Industry Advisory Committee.