Charles Nunn
Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health
Gosnell Family Professor in Global Health
Director, Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine
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Charles Nunn
Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health
Gosnell Family Professor in Global Health
Director, Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine
Charles Nunn addresses a wide range of questions at the intersections of disease ecology, evolutionary medicine, and global health. In Madagascar, he investigates how land use change and market integration influences infectious disease dynamics in humans and other animals. This research focuses on rural areas and addresses global health challenges involving infectious disease, food security, hypertension, and sleep. In ecological research, Nunn investigates zoonotic disease emergence in humans and the predictors of cross-species transmission. These projects involve large-scale informatics datasets, including phylogenetic comparative studies and meta-analyses. In all of these research areas, Nunn takes an interdisciplinary approach to advance evolutionary perspectives on societally important questions, including research in One Health and pandemic prevention. His research is funded by the NIH, NSF, and other funding agencies. He is the author of Infectious Diseases of Primates: Behavior, Ecology and Evolution and The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology, along with nearly 200 scientific articles and contributed book chapters.
Projects
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Identifying Infectious Disease Transmission Pathways for Improved Population Health and Pandemic Preparedness
Madagascar
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The Impact of Land Use Change on Transmission Potential Networks and Disease Spread in Rural Madagascar
Madagascar
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The Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine (TriCEM)
United States
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Global Mammal Parasite Database
Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa
Publications
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Dubrulle J, Kauffman K, Soarimalala V, Randriamoria T, Goodman SM, Herrera J, et al. Effect of habitat degradation on hantavirus infection among introduced and endemic small mammals of Madagascar. bioRxiv. 2023 Dec 24;Werner CS, Kasan K, Geyer JK, Elmasri M, Farrell MJ, Nunn CL. Using phylogeographic link-prediction in primates to prioritize human parasite screening. American journal of biological anthropology. 2023 Dec;182(4):583–94.Evans MV, Ramiadantsoa T, Kauffman K, Moody J, Nunn CL, Rabezara JY, et al. Sociodemographic Variables Can Guide Prioritized Testing Strategies for Epidemic Control in Resource-Limited Contexts. The Journal of infectious diseases. 2023 Nov;228(9):1189–97.Creighton MJA, Nunn CL. Explaining the primate extinction crisis: predictors of extinction risk and active threats. Proceedings Biological sciences. 2023 Sep;290(2006):20231441.
See more publications at Scholars@Duke