A University of Colorado professor has been awarded a five-year, $875,000 fellowship to study emerging diseases.

CU said Wednesday that Pieter Johnson, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, won a David and Lucille Packard fellowship.

Last year, a team led by Johnson reported on how human-induced changes in the ecosystem have helped spread diseases that affect multiple species.

He said society needs to understand the relationship between changes in the environment and new diseases that jump between wildlife and humans, like the West Nile virus.

Johnson has a reputation for groundbreaking research, a CU spokesperson said.

In the 1990s, a spate of frog-limb deformities baffled scientists. A team led by Johnson published a 1999 paper in the journal Science reporting compelling evidence that the deformities were caused not by pollution, as was widely suspected, but by parasitic trematodes.

Johnson is the 11th faculty member at CU-Boulder to win a Packard fellowship since 1988.