Hahn, Micah

Micah Hahn is a joint degree Ph.D. candidate in Environment & Resources and Population Health Sciences and a National Science Foundation IGERT Fellow at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) where she is advised by Jonathan Patz.  Micah is broadly interested in global environmental change and the epidemiology and ecological distribution of infectious disease.  She is drawn to the field of Conservation Medicine and the role of zoonotics in the disease transmission cycle as well as the impact of large-scale environmental and social disturbances such as deforestation and natural disasters on infectious disease.  Her dissertation research focuses on the environmental risk factors for Nipah Virus spillover from Pteropus fruit bats to humans in Bangladesh.  Her collaborators on this project are EcoHealth Alliance and the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B).  She is also researching the impact of deforestation on malaria incidence in the Brazilian Amazon.

Micah completed her MPH in Global Environmental Health at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University where her research focused on designing a method for quantifying climate change vulnerability at the local level in Mozambique.  Micah created a climate vulnerability index to rank surveyed communities to assist the international humanitarian organization, CARE, design programming that addresses the specific vulnerabilities within each community.  Micah also worked on the Water Team at CARE helping shape the Water Team Climate Change Strategy and integrate adaptation, ecosystem protection, and risk management into new water projects in East Africa.

Micah received a B.A. in Biology from Brandeis University.  As an undergraduate, Micah spent time working at an eye clinic in Orissa, India and studying abroad in Kenya.  These experiences lead her down the path of international public health, and her love for the great outdoors and the challenge of trying to solve really hard problems soon drew her to global environmental health issues.

In her time outside of SAGE, Micah enjoys backpacking, biking, running, playing soccer, scouring flea markets and thrift stores, trying new crazy canning and fermentation experiments, gardening and tending her micro chicken flock, photography, traveling to far off places, and enjoying all that Madison has to offer.