David Benson, professor of molecular and cell biology (Daniel Buttrey\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cHow would science apply to policy, and could I help?\u201d is what drew Benson to apply to the program.<\/p>\n
He studies biogeography \u2013 the spread of bacteria over landscapes and why communities of bacteria develop in one place but not another.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the science that\u2019s of interest \u2013 that\u2019s what I do \u2013 but the implications are also important,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
In Haiti, for example, the devastating outbreak of cholera after the 2010 earthquake might have been prevented if people had thought about international aid workers bringing in bacteria that were foreign to the island. Cholera, until then, was unknown in Haiti. Scientists traced the strain that developed and killed nearly 7,000 people to UN peacekeepers from Nepal who were helping in Haiti after the earthquake. The UN has not yet accepted the scientific finding as conclusive, however.<\/p>\n
Advances in molecular ecology and epidemiology have made it possible to identify virtually all microbes in a wide range of environments \u2013 from the Gulf of Mexico to the human gut, making it possible to track pathogens so that outbreaks can be directly addressed, Benson notes.<\/p>\n
The vast array of DNA sequence data that is now available is another area that interests him. On the positive side, he wrote in his Jefferson Fellow essay, anyone with Internet access, in any country, can use the data for scientific study, without having to generate it. But negative outcomes are possible, too, such as creating new deadly pathogens or devising unethical uses of personalized medicine.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow the rise of egalitarian genomics will affect human history is still a riddle waiting to be resolved,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Antibiotic resistance is another area where policy responses could benefit from scientific advice, he points out. Much of America\u2019s drug production has moved to other countries, such as China and India, leaving the U.S. without the infrastructure that would be needed to make new antimicrobial agents in a pandemic.<\/p>\n
Children’s health in a national and international context<\/strong><\/p>\nHarkness\u2019s research on children and families has included fieldwork in a rural Kenyan village, a middle-class town in the Netherlands, and neighborhoods in eastern Connecticut. Much of her work is in collaboration with an international team of researchers, particularly her colleague and husband Charles Super, professor of human development and family studies and pediatrics.<\/p>\n
One of their most widely publicized studies was on sleep patterns of infants and young children in the U.S. and the Netherlands. They found that Dutch parents were most concerned with making sure their babies had regular schedules and plenty of rest, avoiding over-stimulation and not \u201cpushing\u201d their children to be ahead of their peers. The U.S. babies had more stimulating environments and slept fewer hours per day. The Dutch babies and mothers showed lower levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol than their U.S. counterparts.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth parenting strategies have benefits for children\u2019s development,\u201d says Harkness. \u201cU.S. parents may provide their children with a rich environment for early learning, but they may sometimes underestimate the importance of a good night\u2019s sleep and regular time with the family, such as family dinnertime.\u201d<\/p>\n
The differences also have implications for children\u2019s health, she says, noting the rates of pharmaceutical treatments for children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are much higher in the U.S. than in Europe.<\/p>\n
Harkness and her colleagues are currently working with the Connecticut Children\u2019s Trust Fund in the Department of Social Services to evaluate training programs for home visitors to families at risk of child abuse and neglect. She says the opportunity to contribute her expertise to U.S. foreign policy and program development realizes \u201ca lifelong goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harkness and Benson are not UConn\u2019s first Jefferson Fellows. Steven Geary<\/a>, professor and department head of pathobiology and veterinary science in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, was a Jefferson Fellow in 2008-2009. He continues to consult for the State Department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two UConn professors are among 13 scientists from around the nation selected to spend the next year in D.C., contributing their expertise as Jefferson Science Fellows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":57882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[38],"class_list":["post-57871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 06:18:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57871"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58074,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57871\/revisions\/58074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/57882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57871"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=57871"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=57871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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