One Health, Fish Edition

Dr. Eric Teplitz is a veterinarian and Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University under the mentorship of Dr. Katie Fiorella, studying the rapidly growing aquaculture industry in central and western Kenya. His research focuses on disease surveillance, antimicrobial resistance, aquaculture biosecurity, human nutrition, and fish health. With particular emphasis on the cage aquaculture industry in Lake Victoria, Dr. Teplitz’s work in Kenya promotes capacity development and extension in fish health diagnostics, epidemiology, microbiology, and the management of cage aquaculture systems. 

Before his work in Kenya, Dr. Teplitz worked as an ambulatory livestock veterinarian, providing clinical care, surgery, and herd health work to dairy/beef cattle, small ruminants, and swine in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. He earned his DVM from Cornell University and his B.Sc. from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Kathryn (Katie) Fiorella is an environmental scientist and epidemiologist focused on understanding the complex interactions among environmental change and community well-being, food systems, and nutrition. Her work is focused on global fisheries and the people that depend upon these environmental resources for food and income. Dr. Fiorella uses interdisciplinary methods to explore how ecological and social systems interact, the ways communities and households adapt to and mitigate environmental change, and the links between human well-being and ecological sustainability. 

Dr. Fiorella’s work has been funded by the NSF, USAID, National Geographic, and others, and she has published more than 45 peer-reviewed journal articles. She is a co-editor of the book, “Foundations of Socio-Environmental Research: Legacy Readings with Commentaries,” an anthology of 53 foundational readings tracing the history of socio-environmental research from the late 1700s onward. 

Dr. Fiorella is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell University, and she leads the Food Systems and Health Concentration area of the Master of Public Health Program. She is a Faculty Fellow of the Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health as well as of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and the Center for Health Equity. In addition, Dr. Fiorella is a core faculty member of the Southeast Asia Program. 

Dr. Fiorella holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy & Management and a Master of Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley, and an A.B. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University.

Sebastian Heilpern is an ecologist and sustainability scientist focusing on understanding the causes and consequences of biodiversity change. He is particularly interested in the intersection between aquatic ecosystems, fisheries, and food security. 

Currently an Eric & Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University, Dr. Heilpern received a Ph.D. from Columbia University and an M.S. from the University of Chicago, and he has worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society for over 15 years on issues related to freshwater conservation in the Amazon. Dr. Heilpern is also a Postdoctoral Affiliate at the Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health.