Fall 2026 Missouri Data Science and Informatics Symposium

Satellite observations and geospatial data science are transforming our ability to understand how environmental conditions shape human health. From climate-sensitive infectious disease risk to air quality, heat exposure, and environmental change, Earth observation systems provide a planetary-scale view of the conditions that influence well-being. Within a One Health framework, recognizing the interconnected health of people, animals, and ecosystems, these data allow us to link environmental dynamics with patterns of disease, vulnerability, and resilience. This talk explores how integrating satellite data, spatial modeling, and health information allows us to “read the planet’s vital signs,” revealing emerging risks and opportunities for prevention. By bringing together Earth observation and health data, geospatial science can help translate planetary signals into actionable insights for protecting health in a changing world.

BioSara Capponi is Research Staff Member in the department of Functional Genomics and Cellular Engineering at the IBM Almaden Research Center, where she leads the Cellular Engineering Lab. She is a recognized expert in computational biophysics, with expertise ranging from artificial intelligence to structural and synthetic biology. Her main interest is to understand how natural and artificial biological systems function combining structural biology with physics, mathematics, and computer science.
Dr. Capponi is IBM PI and site director of the Center for Cellular Construction [https://centerforcellularconstruction.org/], an NSF Science and Technology Center that aims at developing an engineering discipline to design cells. Dr. Capponi contributed to studies on macromolecular and cellular systems and to design antivirals and immunotherapies. During her career, she made use of different computational approaches, including molecular dynamics, enhanced sampling techniques, agent-based models, and machine learning methods.
Dr. Capponi contributions have been cited in the IBM Research Blog https://research.ibm.com/blog/accelerating-covid-discoveries, https://research.ibm.com/blog/decoding-car-t-cells, and in the 2022 IBM Research Annual Letter from Dario Gil https://research.ibm.com/blog/research-annual-letter-2022.
For a complete list of publications, refer to: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1qW4qncAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao