Dr. Kacey Ernst is an infectious disease epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the College of Public Health. She holds joint appointments in the School of Geography and the School of Comparative Animal and Biomedical Sciences. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, and she is currently the co-lead for the Bridging Biodiversity and Conservation Science Initiative within the Arizona Institute for Resilience and is a member of the Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs for Arid Lands Resource Science, Entomology, and Global Change. Her work focuses on human-environment interactions on local and global scales to determine the transmission of infectious diseases, primarily vector-borne diseases. She has a specific emphasis on malaria and dengue prevention and control and their social and environmental determinants. Her work is geared towards developing applied strategies to build community resilience to prevent disease transmission in the face of a changing climate and reduced investment in top-down programming. She works within interdisciplinary teams to develop an understanding of how weather and climate influence vector-borne disease dynamics. These findings are translated into predictive modeling efforts with an eye to developing early warning systems that can be used by decision-makers and the public. Leveraging mobile technology, she has worked to enhance transparency and provide situational awareness to the public, including a specific focus on women and gender equity in addressing emerging infectious disease threats.