The Mission blue butterfly lives exclusively around the San Bruno Mountain in California. There are an estimated 18,000 adults remaining in their original region. While its bright blues may seem better fitted for the tropics, mountainous regions are, in fact, hosts to two-thirds of butterfly species across the world, according to researchers. 

Recently, Yale researchers published a first-of-its-kind study in Nature, using previously collected data to map out butterfly hotspots. 

“Unfortunately, our first global assessment of butterfly diversity and threats finds that butterflies’ fascinating diversification into higher-elevation environments might now spell their demise, with potentially thousands of species committed to extinction from global warming this century,” Walter Jetz, director of the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change who oversaw the study, told the News. 

Today, climate change threatens the careful balance of the alpine regions, leaving the Mission blue and other fragile butterfly populations in considerable danger.

Climate Threat to Butterflies

Historically, conservation efforts have largely excluded butterflies and other insects to prioritize protecting land vertebrates, such as mammals or reptiles. Now, global assessments of insect biodiversity and climate change vulnerability have been lacking — primarily due to the limited and incomplete distribution data for most insect taxa.

Larry Gall, senior collections manager of the center’s entomology division and moth researcher, considers butterflies to be “specialized moths” that are active in the daytime as opposed to nighttime.

“As is true for most insects, Lepidoptera [the scientific name for butterflies and moths] in their various life stages are involved in pollination, nutrient cycling and other important roles in ecosystems,” Gall wrote to the News. “[With] no habitat for Lepidoptera, [there would be] no springtime as we presently know it, and related tragedies.”

Gall’s alarming message regarding the butterfly threat is not unfounded. However, not much has been done in part due to the lack of information available.

According to Jetz, ignoring insect populations in conservation sciences has created “vast global knowledge gaps,” potentially leading to past conservation decisions that were uninformed.

“Our study is the first to systematically identify and assess butterfly biodiversity hotspots, establishing a clear and strong connection with mountain regions which harbour a disproportionately high percentage of butterfly diversity,” Jetz wrote.

The researchers pored through atlases, field guides and the extensive pre-existing literature on butterflies. They then used automated models that integrated these official records with citizen-scientist data.

In the publication, the team used colorful legends to depict higher concentrations of species of butterflies at higher altitudes.

The main findings? Mountains are critical for butterfly biodiversity. 

Mountain, or alpine, ecosystems are unique due to their physical structures. In addition to being large physical barriers, mountains also serve as environmental buffers. Precipitation levels, temperature and environmental conditions are all more stable in these areas.

However, as outlined in a 2022 article published in PeerJ, mountain environments today are in a “state of rapid transition as a consequence of climate change in the Anthropocene.”

The overall increase in temperature may cause ice cover — a useful sort of “sunshade” — to melt, exposing dark rock that absorbs rather than reflects heat. As the ice melts more, the speed of water run-off that reaches lower-lying ecosystems may increase, changing the way ecosystems or even cities deal with the influx of ice melt.

Regionally, changes in weather patterns may reduce the number of frost days, alter the treeline of forested regions and change the way plants interact with their environment— all of which will indirectly affect butterfly populations. 

“Our results suggest that mountain areas — once vital refugia — are increasingly at risk of becoming biodiversity traps,” Stefan Pinkert, a University of Marburg lecturer and former postdoc in Jetz’s lab, said. 

Pinkert is also the lead author of the study. 

Even then, the data is incomplete. The results are “broad, yet conservative,” according to Pinkert, and don’t offer a complete image of the butterflies’ interactions with other organisms.

Looking Ahead

Protecting these delicate insects extends far beyond just saving their kind.

Butterflies are a vital component of Earth’s biodiversity. As caterpillars, they are often specialized herbivores that help regulate plant abundance and contribute to nutrient cycling; as adults, they pollinate flowering plants. 

This evolutionary relationship they have with plants makes both groups not only ecologically important but also “highly vulnerable.” A loss in butterflies and pollinators as a whole will deeply impact humans — economically and emotionally.

“Just as plants may face greater extinction risks from the loss of associated butterflies, their decline would, in turn, accelerate the precarious situation butterfly populations are facing,” Pinkert said. “While the knowledgebase for other insect groups is even more limited, conservation priorities for butterflies and their vulnerability likely apply to many terrestrial insects. This suggests unfortunately very dire consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the coming decades, urging rapid and targeted conservation and restoration efforts.”

With newfound information on butterfly hotspots, Pinkert suggests that governments can increase protections by expanding protected natural areas into mountains, where environmental pressures from human land-and-resource use are increasing.

Governments can also “implement migration corridors and targeted conservation of hotspots of butterfly rarity,” Jetz said.

However, last month, the Trump administration implemented aggressive “rollbacks” on regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal entity responsible for protecting natural lands.

Those who care about butterflies can still do their part in protecting them. 

Butterflies don’t need much space, Pinkert says. Local landowners can set aside small plots of land of butterfly-friendly habitats to support stable populations. 

“Simple measures—such as managing meadows extensively without the use of fertilizers or pesticides—can make a significant difference,” Pinkert wrote. “Many species will readily return to gardens, field margins, and other semi-natural areas if the right conditions are restored.”

Even citizens, unfamiliar with the thousands of species of butterflies, may be able to boost conservation, Pinkert says. By utilizing the iNaturalist app, users can contribute images of species they might happen upon in their neighborhood or vacations abroad.”

The Yale Peabody Museum houses over 350,000 butterfly and moth specimens.

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The two-day Admitted Student Welcome Days event took place on April 3 to 4 on Yale’s campus, near Kroon Hall, with a variety of events taking place either in the building or close-by. 

Last year’s admitted class ranges from 20 to 46 years old, with some having five to 10 years of professional experience and others matriculating straight from undergrad.

“The admissions team is so excited for this year’s Admitted Student Welcome Days,” Brie Charles, assistant director of admissions, events and recruitment, wrote to the News. “We believe that this year’s program will do a fantastic job of showcasing our campus, community, and academics and will help students feel confident in their decision that YSE can help them make the kind of impact they want to make in the world!”

YSE has traditionally hosted some type of yield program to boost the number of students who matriculate after acceptance, but last year the admissions team adopted the name “Admitted Student Welcome Days” to better reflect the nature of the program. 

According to Charles, their goal during Admitted Student Welcome Days is to “use the 1.5 days students are on campus to get a better sense of what their time at YSE will look like.” 

Admitted students will hear from individuals within their student support teams and meet with members of the YSE Student Affairs Committee and various student interest groups. 

“Admitted Students Welcome Days is a great first opportunity for accepted students to get to know each other and discover everything YSE has to offer,” Kaley Sperling MESc ’26 told the News. “I’m super excited to get to share YSE with the incoming class!” 

Emma Thornton, ENV ’27 SOM ’27 was in charge of organizing a meet-and-greet event for students admitted to the YSE and School of Management joint degree program. The dual-degree program allows students to obtain an MBA from the SOM along with a master of environmental management or master of forestry from the School of Environment. 

On average, fewer than 10 students each year are accepted, providing those who are with a greater sense of community.

“The joint degree community holds events regularly to socialize and build our sense of community, as well as develop academically and professionally,” Thornton wrote to the News. “Our gathering at East Rock Brewing during YSE Admitted Students Welcome Days is a chance for incoming and prospective ‘Joints’ to come meet the rest of our lovely community and get a sense for what it’s like to enroll in the YSE/SOM joint degree program at Yale!”

The second day will be primarily focused on academics and feature micro lectures from two of YSE’s faculty members, Professors Liza Comita and Narasimha Rao. Programming also includes personal outreach from current YSE students and alumni to admitted students through virtual webinars and one-on-one virtual appointments.

YSE admits can also expect a surprise visit from Handsome Dan and Heidi, Yale’s two beloved campus canine celebrities. On the more fun end of the tour, there will also be a tour of the Yale Farm, free food, panels featuring current students and a tabling fair with all of YSE’s Centers and Programs. 

“We hope that during their time here students will get a sense of our tight-knit community and a better understanding of what distinguishes YSE as a locus for environmental education, research, and practice,” Charles said.

While Welcome Days used to take on a hybrid form, the event has transitioned to being primarily in-person this year, with most of the program being recorded and emailed to all admitted students post-program. 

YSE is located at 195 Prospect St.

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Medical terminology is notoriously challenging to laypeople and medical students alike. 

On March 19, Yale students put their spelling brains to the test in a Medical Spelling Bee hosted at the School of Medicine. Contestants represented various Yale disciplines, including students from the School of Medicine and the School of Public Health. In the end, Shaila Ghanekar MED ’27 a second-year medical student, who also won the competition last year, and Saba Saidi a second-year medical student from Albert Einstein College of Medicine won after correctly spelling balanoposthitis, an inflammation of the penis. 

After correctly spelling pinguecula, a raised bump on the eye, the second place team was eliminated on chenodeoxycholic, a bile salt. The third place team fell to collodion, a wound sealant, after spelling borborygmi, the sound of a digesting stomach, correctly.

“Given how many new words healthcare trainees have to learn, I figured it would be a fun way to bring people together across professional disciplines and laugh at the ridiculousness and complexity of some of the medical words that exist,” said Noah Brazer MED ’27, a second-year medical student and the organizer of the event.

Brazer conceived the idea when he watched Akeelah and the Bee on a flight to New Haven. In the movie, Akeelah Anderson, a young girl from Los Angeles, enters the National Spelling Bee competition and wins after spelling “pulchritude”.

The inaugural Med Bee took place last spring, and Brazer has organized one each semester since. Brazer says in order to convince friends to show up to the first Bee, and to raise sufficient  funds, he promised to dress up in light of the occasion. 

Brazer got his way and, true to his word, “dressed up in bee drag and performed to Imma Bee.” 

The Spelling Bee was divided into two parts: Jeopardy-style rounds where individuals or teams wrote down words and a classic elimination-style spelling bee.

The Jeopardy rounds were divided into five mini-rounds, each with five words: Warmup; Double Dose, featuring harder words worth double points; Pharmacophilia, covering generic drug names; Elusive Eponyms, focused on proper nouns; and Have You Heard?, showcasing words most people have never heard of.

Only some top contestants advanced into the classic spelling bee. In this round, teams stood at the podium and spelled words out loud, and were eliminated if they misspelled a word. Generous to his competitors, Brazer incorporated opportunities for teams to earn their spot back.

“The most magical part of the medical spelling bee is how many people show up from different programs: MD students, PA students, PHD students, MPH students and even medical and dental residents,” Eliza Epstein MED ’27 wrote to the News. “On top of the activity itself, I always look forward to meeting new people there!” 

Although this year’s turnout was lower than expected — with six rather than 15 teams — Brazer says the teams were skilled and were able to advance to the “the hardest level of difficulty (sudden death).”

“To me the Spelling Bee reflects the energy and uniqueness of Yale School of Medicine students,” Dr. Randi Epstein MED ’90, the Bee’s faculty advisor, told the News. “Why fret about the multi-syllabic hard-to-pronounce jargon? Just turn the learning process into a fun evening out with your classmates.”

Last year’s winning words were Escherichia, the long form of E. coli, and chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus, which took second place. 

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Lurking in the metal crevices of your Stanley, or snuggled within the silicon lip of your Owala might be a mysterious dark splotch — mold. Should students be concerned about their potential mold exposure?

“Molds can be both beneficial and harmful. Some are useful, while others can pose risks, especially to people with allergies or specific health conditions,” Zheng Wang, a senior research scientist in the Townsend Lab at the School of Medicine, said. “However, except for individuals with severe allergic reactions, most molds in the environment aren’t a major concern.”

Molds are a type of fungi that can be found in a variety of environments, from tropical forests to within our homes.

While mold grows on surfaces rich in organic matter, some species hide on any humid surface, such as the bathtub or kitchen countertops.

Zheng Wang told the News that even though molds are usually not harmful to healthy individuals, some species like yellowish-green Aspergillus produce toxins that can lead to cancer on rare occasions.

“Your mom told you not to eat moldy food because some molds produce and release toxins as they grow – and eating these toxins can make you sick,” Dr. Barbara Kazmierczak, a professor of medicine and microbial pathogenesis, said. “A second risk of drinking mold-containing water is that some of it can go up your nose or into your lungs – and that’s a way of introducing molds into your sinuses or airways.”

Based on a visual analysis alone, it is difficult to ascertain the danger of a mold. 

Denny Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at Yale School of Public Health, studies mycoparasites, fungi that essentially eat other fungi. He says the main concerns with mold are around their secondary metabolites, toxic chemicals they produce to kill competing microbes.

Aflatoxins are one of the most notorious secondary metabolites, which can appear in contaminated peanuts and dried fruit. High doses of these toxins can lead to liver failure, and even low dosage can be carcinogenic, or cancer-causing.

“Fortunately, not all molds are that toxic, and for most people, accidental mold consumption is unlikely to cause severe harm,” Wang said.

Another complication due to exposure to mold is allergies, Wang noted. Coughing and asthma are common symptoms and individual reactions can vary. So, people who are more sensitive should be more cautious about the molds that may exist in their living environment.

According to Wang, rare and sometimes life-threatening fungal infections can occur in immunocompromised patients. These infections can be difficult to treat due to how evolutionarily similar fungi are to humans; antifungals that can effectively kill fungi may harm human cells as well.

As for Yalies who deep-clean their bottles once every break? The concern around mold exposure is minimal.

“If you wouldn’t eat a moldy piece of food or brie, then just wash your water bottle,” Kazmierczak said.

Chaetomium, a common indoor fungus, can cause major health issues. 

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The forum, hosted at Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall and featuring speakers from YCCCH, discussed the history of Yale’s climate and health involvement and touched on recent accomplishments. YCCCH Executive Director Jen Wang organized the forum with YCCCH co-faculty directors Dr. Robert Dubrow and Dr. Kai Chen. The forum celebrated ten years of the center.

“We had two primary goals: To bring together Yale faculty from across the university to learn about each other’s work in climate change and health, build relationships, and foster collaboration for future external funding proposals, [and] to celebrate 10 years of YCCCH and re-introduce the center to the Yale community as a leader, convenor, and thought partner on climate change and health research at Yale and beyond,” Jennifer Wang wrote to the News.

Wang joined the University in 2023 and took over as the YCCCH’s executive director. She is a co-instructor in a School of Public Health and School of the Environment’s cross-listed course, “Clinic in Climate Justice and Public Health,” which provides practical experiences for student teams to work on community or stakeholder-engaged projects.

According to Wang, this was the first time faculty have convened for a forum. Its exigence came about to celebrate “the great track record in research, education, and policy” and “re-invite the Yale faculty community to explore collaborations with us.”

“We were very pleased with the turnout from many parts of the University,” Dubrow, the founding director and co-faculty director of YCCCH, said. 

He estimates that, throughout the day, over 50 faculty members attended — including from the Schools of Public Health, Medicine, Nursing, Environment, and Architecture, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Provost’s Office.

The collaboration between Yale’s medical and climate change research communities has been increasing in recent years, according to Dubrow.

Climate Change and Health Concentration for Masters of Public Health has had 27 graduates since it was established in 2020, according to Dubrow, and over 800 working professionals from 66 countries completed the online Climate Change and Health Certificate Program. Students in the Clinic in Climate Justice and Public Health have carried out 41 projects since the course started in 2017. 

YCCCH also has a CDC-funded partnership with the Connecticut Department for Public Health to engage in local heat and air quality preparedness and response plans.

“The Yale Center on Climate Change and Health is promoting collaborative efforts across multiple disciplines to tackle the health impacts of climate change,” YCCCH Fellow Cristina Arnés Sanz MPH ’25 told the News, “It was very inspiring to witness faculty from various schools at Yale gathering at the Forum with a shared commitment to breaking down silos and co-developing innovative research on climate and health.” 

In 2020, the YCCCH was adapted from the Yale Climate Change and Health Initiative, which was created in 2015.

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Motivated by disaster and by pain, these two juniors at Yale College turned to artistic creation. Combining their prior expertise, they’ve organized an upcoming gallery titled, Palette to Purpose. The theme: “What is your ecological vision?” 

Visual artists from the University and greater New Haven created pieces and were grouped with a musician or an engineer to add a nonvisual aspect to their artwork, whether it be through music or through touch. One showing will be March 24 to March 31 in the Ezra Stiles College art gallery. The second showing will be April 28 in the Yale Club of New York City.

“You feel emotion when you listen to music. You feel emotion when you look at a painting,” Young said. “If you mix two, you’re able to, kind of like, create this bridge between different senses that is all towards one goal, which is environmental advocacy and climate change awareness.”

Drawing inspiration

A self-described climate artist, Young is no stranger to activism. She has created art in the wake of disaster and has traveled to different countries to interview community members about their climate stories, which she then creates paintings of.

Young also founded a nonprofit called Relief after Disaster in high school, and won a United Nations Millennium Fellowship to help her kick off the inaugural Palette to Purpose exhibition in 2024.

Jain, a singer since age four, attended an arts high school. Growing up, her house was “always filled with music” — her brother playing Indian drums, her singing, songs playing on speaker.

Jain previously conducted research on music therapy for people with visual impairments. She found strong links between art therapy and how it improved mental health in low vision individuals. 

“Arts are very visual by nature,” Jain explained. “We came up with this concept of a multidimensional art exhibit where not only you were consuming art by looking at it, but you’re also engaging the other senses.”

In 2019, Jain founded a nonprofit called EyeMatter to make the arts more accessible for the low vision community. She was inspired by collections in the New York Public Library that feature Braille and Talking Book Library, which makes written works more accessible to the blind.

Through a partnership with the World Wildlife Foundation, or WWF, the Palette to Purpose organizers are ensuring the creators create fact-checked art. Each pair of visual and tactile/musical artists works with a WWF educator who ensures their work is backed by science. 

Funds from the art sale and gallery will go toward Direct Relief and Anekant Community Center, an organization that provides free cataract surgery in countries like India and Kenya.

The musician and the maker

Dahlia Kordit ’28 creates visual art with various physical mediums. She learned about Palette to Purpose through Yale Visual Artists and felt a call to get involved. 

“I always try to push myself in new directions when I am creating a work of art. For me, this often means using materials in new ways that add to the meaning of my work,” Kordit told the News. “Since this exhibition is centered around the climate, I decided that it would be best to incorporate recycled materials into whatever I make.”

Kordit experimented with three-dimensionality, incorporating an old canvas and various material scraps into her piece.

The final product incorporates paper mache, “a technique that [she] had never tried before” but she feels adds both physical and symbolic depth.

Rory Bricca ’26 is the composer and improvisational pianist working with Kordit on her piece. 

He received only a draft of what Kordit envisioned — then, just a foregrounded arm holding nature in the palm of its hand, surrounded by dark clouds.

The two exchanged voice memos and offered interpretations of the piece and how each perceived the composition.

“We discussed how the fate of our planet is in our hands, how we have the power and responsibility to act,” Bricca said. “I sent her a piano improvisation with beautiful major triads in the right hand being interrupted by a dissonant bass melody, which I thought would capture this juxtaposition between the beauty of nature and the terrifying power that our species has to destroy it.”

The duo struggled initially to “bridge the gap between art and music,” according to Bricca, but with Kordit’s suitemate, a spoken word poet, they were able to come up with five phrases highlighting different aspects of the visual work and have those overarching themes carry Bricca’s piece along.

“Another detail that I really look forward to incorporating in this piece is the concept of the red string of fate, as well as tying a knot around your finger in an effort to remember something,” Kordit told the News. “It goes back to how Rory described my piece — our fate is tied to the planet, and we have to do our best to remind ourselves of that.”

Singing for climate

Zaida Rio Polanco ’26 is an environmental studies major who has been a singer-songwriter for “as long as [she] can remember.”

In 2020, Rio performed in several climate justice protest concerts. She collaborated with Young last year for OurHouse, the annual arts showcase to promote student artists of color. 

“I wrote a song called ‘Slow Violence’ about incremental changes due to climate change and how that ties to slow violence in relationships,” Rio said. “[Camila] made a live painting to it during the performance. It was really beautiful.”

The artist that Rio is working with right now for Palette to Purpose created a moving graphic design.

“If there was ever a time for the performing arts to really like come alive for social justice, climate justice, it would be now,” Rio said. “Under Trump, it’s just like … the call to action is so much more important now.”

Globally, at least 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment.

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These regions where wilderness meets human architecture are not only aesthetically pleasing but offer a sense of closeness to the planet. Like the Earth’s beauty is palpable. But, it can also be cause for concern.

Over 3.5 billion people live in the wildland-urban interface, or WUI — the zone where cities meet and intermingle with unoccupied nature. Today, the WUI covers five percent of the planet and is growing as a result of urbanization. Some people reside in the WUI for leisure, vacationing in picturesque mountainside homes, and others, like the over one billion people who live in slums and informal settlements, have no other choice.

A Yale study published in Global Change Biology found that zoonotic, or animal-borne, disease transmission in these regions is on the rise.

“Our paper highlights a neglected risk factor for the emergence of zoonotic diseases,” Rohan Simkin ENV ’24, the lead author of the paper, wrote to the News. “These [WUI] regions are predicted to undergo rapid urban population growth in the coming decades, which will increase the physical footprint of cities, potentially expanding the risks associated with exposure to zoonotic diseases.”

Simkin conducted the study as a doctoral student with Karen Seto, the professor of geography and urbanization science. 

As the human population grows, urbanization is expanding into wildlands. Seto’s research explores how this affects the planet. 

“This is an exciting study as it’s the first one to examine how urbanization and the growth of the wildland-urban interface will shape zoonotic disease exposure,” Seto told the News. 

The complexity of these landscapes means that urban populations live with or near livestock and wild animals, creating ideal conditions for diseases to jump from animals to humans, known as spillover. 

Spillover can occur in hunting populations that sell bushmeat products in urban markets. Or it may occur where livestock become infected via interaction with wildlife hosts — like with the recent avian flu epidemic — and then pass pathogens to humans, either via direct contact or through consumption of animal products.  

The WUI also puts humans in closer proximity with insect vectors like mosquitos and ticks that can bring pathogens from wild animals to humans.

“There are many different pathways, but the key thing to remember here is that WUIs are sites where urban populations are concentrated into areas with high land-use complexity, creating opportunities for novel and frequent human-animal interactions that could lead to spillover,” Simkin wrote.

While populations living in poverty or higher-density slums are most at risk, a zoonotic disease can spread across populations and pose a pandemic threat.

“Based on the weather change and the busy global traveling, it is almost undoubted that there will be more zoonotic disease in the near future,” Dr. Yu-Min Chuang, who was not involved in the study, said.

As a researcher in the School of Medicine Infectious Disease Department, Chuang studies the interaction between human hosts, mosquitos and malaria parasites. Chuang is concerned that, with the rise in zoonotic diseases capable of causing death, we won’t have the capacity to deal with them.

The COVID-19 pandemic, Chuang noted, was only dealt with due to modern biomedical genetic techniques and the novel mRNA vaccine.

“The recent [COVID-19] pandemic demonstrated the risk of new viral diseases,” Simkin said.  “So there is an ongoing risk that a new animal borne virus will emerge, such as COVID, SARS etc.”

Simkin listed a few diseases of concern, including Ebola, which is clearly linked to human-wildland interactions, and yellow fever, which is transmitted by mosquitoes from wild primates into urban human populations.

“We do need the continuation of investment to help us combat unknown infectious disease,” Chuang said. “[With] global warming and climate change, we do need to pay attention to zoonotic or other infectious diseases. They will soon or later affect all of us.”

Mosquitos cause 700,000 deaths annually.

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The collaborative project called the Global Greenchem Innovation and Network Programme aims to develop green chemistry initiatives in the Global South and work with professionals from across disciplines, from politicians to entrepreneurs, to foster sustainable innovation.

“Green chemistry is really about how do we get all of the same creativity, brilliant performance that chemistry has contributed to making modern life without all of the problems to human health and the environment,” said professor Paul Anastas, the director of the center.

Anastas, who coined the term “green chemistry,” is also involved with the School of Public Health and the School of the Environment — an interdisciplinary collaboration that is the focus of much of the center’s research.

Some of the work done by the center involves turning wood industry wastes into compounds for use in cosmetics, personal care and cleaners. Another project involves green nanotechnology, engineering microscopic particles to remediate rather than generate water pollution.

“We are fortunate to work with UNIDO once again, as they have tremendous knowledge and experience in the international development arena,” wrote Karolina Mellor, director of the Global Greenchem Innovation and Network Programme, in a 2023 press release. “It is such a pleasure to engage with UNIDO’s network of National Cleaner Production Centers (NCPCs), which are a crucial part of the overall efforts, especially in demonstrating technologies in their respective countries.”

Currently, the international outreach of the organization includes six countries — Jordan, Indonesia, Peru, Ukraine, Serbia and Uganda — to offer alternatives to environmentally harmful persistent organic pollutants, mercury and microplastics.

These chemicals can accumulate over time, leading to adverse reproductive, developmental and hormonal health effects.

“The work that Professor Anastas and the Global Greenchem Innovation and Network Programme is doing is so critically important because it supports economic growth in Global South countries that are disproportionately bearing the burdens of the climate crisis while also helping to eliminate harmful pollutants in those countries and reduce the use of hazardous chemicals worldwide,” School of Environment Dean Indy Burke wrote to the News.

In addition to traditional laboratory research and policy, the center also “spits out companies,” according to Anastas.

One example is P2 Science, an organic polymer company that started in Yale’s Chemistry Department. The company, which Anastas and Patrick Foley ENG ’12 co-founded, turns plant-based compounds into ingredients for flavors and fragrances.

Some of the environmental work conducted by the center has been under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency, an organization currently under attack by the Trump administration.

“I’m a big believer in the federal government’s role in funding basic research, discovery and innovation necessary to move toward systems that are cleaner, don’t generate waste and, quite frankly, drive innovation, drive new industry sectors [and] drive new jobs,” Anastas said. However, the government is only “a small source of funding,” he added.

Yale will collaborate with the Nobel Foundation to host a symposium on chemistry for sustainability in May.

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Outside, homes are fractured. Inside, relationships, bearing the invisible stresses of the heat, crumble, too.

“Climate change exacerbates mental health stressors, especially among populations facing displacement, food insecurity and economic instability due to environmental shocks,” Kaveh Khoshnood SPH ’89 GRD ’95, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, wrote to the News.

Khoshnood’s work at the Humanitarian Research Lab — or HRL — investigates the impact of war, forced migration and environmental shocks on health outcomes in vulnerable populations.

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, climate change is considered a “serious aggravator of gender-based violence” and increases the risk of domestic violence. Economic strain, displacement and social isolation, as well as psychological distress, are mechanisms by which climate change accelerates intimate partner violence incidents, Khoshnood mentioned.

“[The] loss of livelihoods due to climate disasters can increase financial dependence, reducing women’s ability to leave abusive relationships,” Khoshnood said.

Countries that have experienced recent, acute weather events — such as cyclones, flooding, heat waves and droughts — have a higher prevalence of intimate partner violence, according to a recent paper published in the journal, PLOS Climate.

“For this particular project, we look[ed] at upstream global issues and how those play into violence as a downstream factor,” said Abigail Hatcher, an associate professor of health behavior at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health. 

The paper drew data on intimate partner violence from a variety of pre-existing databases and merged this with the Emergency Events Database, a global list of climate shocks. 

The World Health Organization and other organizations often conduct household interviews as part of the survey procedure. Questions for women ask if they’ve experienced any physical or sexual violence from a husband or partner in the last 12 months.

“When extreme weather happens, it has this immediate physiological effect on your body, obviously, but also how your nervous system is responding,” Hatcher said. “Extreme weather will always have a gendered effect.”

According to Hatcher, hunger leads to more impulsive, violent actions, as anxiety responses might be heightened.

Additionally, there are the added social factors if a household doesn’t have food, and how it might reflect on them within their community, Hatcher says.

A 2023 study led by Dr. Pooja Agrawal, a global health specialist at the School of Medicine, examined the interplay between climate change, food insecurity and gender-based violence.

The authors wrote that climate shocks strain food production and transportation infrastructure and impact how vulnerable populations access food. When people lose the ability to make their livelihoods, this can have significant negative effects on societal dynamics.

The Yale study alluded to several case studies in which climate change worsened livelihoods. The 1998 floods that decimated infrastructure in Dhaka City, Bangladesh, led to an increase in food prices and a lack of safe drinking water. With rampant unemployment and rising tensions, domestic violence incidents rose. 

In 1997, a drought brought food insecurity to the Hawa people, a farming population in Papua New Guinea. The Hawa responded to resulting food insecurity with an increase in “witch killings,” or violence predominantly targeted at women. 

In Senegal and Ghana, a similar phenomenon of increased sexual violence — including rape, forced prostitution and early marriage of girls — was observed in response to disasters triggered by natural hazards.

Patriarchal societies play into this gendered experience of a disaster. These effects impact who picks up labor during recovery efforts or bears the abuse at home.

Bryn Redal SPH ’25, a research assistant at the Yale Program for Climate Change Communication, said that climate change “alters human behavior both directly and indirectly” by driving economic instability, food and water insecurity and increasing mental health stressors.

“Rising food prices and resource scarcity can alter dietary habits and migration decisions, while food insecurity has been linked to increased aggression and intimate partner violence,” Redal wrote to the News. “Climate anxiety, displacement, and loss of livelihoods contribute to heightened stress, depression, and social unrest, influencing political engagement and community dynamics.”

In the future, research could explore regional differences, as some climate shocks may have stronger effects on domestic violence in low-income countries where social protections are weaker, said Khoshnood.

He also thinks it would be valuable to incorporate qualitative data — such as survivor narratives — to better understand how climate change exacerbates domestic violence risks at a community level.

“The study reinforces the urgent need for climate resilience strategies that incorporate gender-based violence prevention,” Khoshnood said.

Hatcher is, however, worried about the future of this research. Last week, the Trump Administration moved to end the U.S. Agency for International Development, which runs a data collection agency called the Demographic and Health Surveys, from which the study authors drew data.

“The world will no longer have data about country wealth, estimates of health and social factors like intimate partner violence,” Hatcher said. 

The Demographic and Health Surveys has population and health data from over 400 surveys conducted in over 90 countries.

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The YURC is an interdisciplinary, undergraduate-run research symposium. At the inauguration, which will take place between April 5-6 this year, undergraduate researchers will be invited to present their  research at Yale. 

“It has been an uphill battle for us,” YURC Committee Head Rishit Shaquib ’28 told the News. “We don’t have central funding, so we’re seeing our largest expansion to date.”

In previous years, the organization worked with a budget of roughly $4,000. 

This year, the student organizers expect costs to rise tenfold to accommodate four times the number of participants.

“We’re different from other undergraduate research symposiums in that we’re interdisciplinary,” YURC President Zihan Yang ’26 said. “Yale has such a large humanities department, and we’re really excited to have both humanities and science research.”

Few conferences accommodate the diverse range of subjects Yale specializes in. 

Yale’s departments, participants noted, each host their own symposiums at the end of the year. The vision is that YURC will combine topics from each department to showcase the rich research across disciplines.

“Hopefully, it will make us more interesting to a larger group of people, not just people who are interested in science research but people who are interested in seeing what research looks like in other fields [such as] political science or history,” Speaker Committee member Noah Abbott ’28 said.

The team is currently in the process of finalizing its speakers, but YURC has a couple of guests it is excited to highlight.

These notable keynote speakers include Ramanan Laxminarayan, a Princeton economist and epidemiologist at the One Health Trust, and Edward Altman, a NYU professor who formed the Altman Z-score for predicting bankruptcy.

YURC is committed to achieving both geographic and racial representation in participants. To cater to a broader research community, the group has engaged in outreach across five regions of the U.S. 

“We’re really focusing on building something that’s geographically diverse, compositionally diverse and diverse from a fields and interests perspective,” Shaquib said.

To address underrepresented groups in research, YURC said that Yale’s Central Diversity Office has agreed to offer scholarships for travel and registration for individuals accepted from historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. 

Those unable to attend the event in person have the option to register to the virtual conference, which includes speaker recordings, networking opportunities and virtual poster sessions.

YURC is organized by the Yale Undergraduate Research Association.

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