Center for Health and Wellbeing

Several of the most significant problems facing humanity represent irreducible mixtures of environmental, social, political and engineering challenges. The energy crisis encompasses the environmental problems of climate change and air pollution, the political and economic problems of energy security, price volatility and Middle Eastern instability, and the myriad of engineering problems that stand in the way of practical alternatives to fossil fuels. Rural poverty in developing nations is simultaneously a problem in development economics and policy, and in land use, biodiversity and hydrology. Emerging infectious diseases demand new drugs from engineers and molecular biologists, epidemiological models from mathematical ecologists and healthcare policy options from social scientists.

In 2007 the Princeton Environmental Institute, the Woodrow Wilson School and the School of Engineering and Applied Science launched the Grand Challenges Initiative, an integrated research and teaching program designed to promote student involvement and faculty research on three important issues related to the environment, technology and public policy: (1) energy, specifically the intersection of the climate, energy security and air pollution problems; (2) the interacting problems of rural poverty, land use, biodiversity and water in Africa; and (3) global health problems, with a focus on infectious disease in the developing world.

The Grand Challenges Initiative is organized around three research cooperatives, each of which creates interdisciplinary programs of research and teaching that engage faculty, postdoctoral and graduate fellows, and undergraduates from across the University. The Center for Health & Wellbeing manages the Grand Challenges research cooperative on Global Health and Infectious Disease.

Global Health and Infectious Disease

Current Projects

Upcoming Events

For more information on Grand Challenges projects on Global Health and Infectious Disease, contact Kristina Graff, Associate Director for the Center for Health and Wellbeing.