Researchers at University of Hawai’i at Manoa’s Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) were recently awarded a $1.026 million grant from NASA to develop coral disease forecasting models for Hawai’i, U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands, and the Great Barrier Reef. Megan Donahue, principle investigator and HIMB researcher, and Jamie Caldwell, HIMB post-doctoral fellow on the project, will lead an international team as they combine field work, experimental work, previously collected data, and satellite data to predict disease risk up to six months before an expected outbreak. Scientists Mark Eakin, Scott Heron and Bernardo Vargas-Angel from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch and Coral Reef Ecosystem Program are co-investigators on the grant, and Tracy Ainsworth and Bill Leggat of James Cook University in Australia are key participants on the four-year project.