Nina Lam delivers 6th Annual Borchert Lecture
Dr. Nina Lam, Professor of Environmental Sciences at Louisiana State University (LSU), gave the sixth annual Borchert Lecture speaker, which honors the late John Borchert, University of Minnesota Regents Professor in Geography and member of the U.S. National Academy of Science. Her presentation, From Disease to Disaster: Geospatial Analysis for Environmental Decision Making on Friday, November 16 was well attended by a diverse audience from the campus and the community with GIS, geography, public health and other related interests. As a renowned expert and leader in GIS, remote sensing, spatial analysis, and environmental health, Dr. Lam's research spans continents and decades, in both methodological and app
lied domains. In the early 1980s, her study on cancer mortality patterns in China has revealed unusual clustered patterns and identified possible links between environmental conditions and cancers. Her pioneering research on the spread of HIV/AIDS in the United States was the first to confirm a national trend of HIV/AIDS spread in rural America. Her current research focuses on developing models to understand business return decisions in New Orleans after Katrina and to measure community resilience and sustainability. Dr. Lam has published one book, Fractals in Geography, and over 70 refereed journal articles and chapters, and has served as the PI or co-PI of over 35 external grants. She was also a Program Director of the Geography and Regional Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation from 1999-2001, and was elected and served as President of University Consortium on Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) in 2004.