BOTSWANA
Gaerolwe Masheto
LMIC Fellow
Dr. Gaerolwe Masheto started working at Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute (BHP) Clinical Trial Unit (CTU) in 2011 as a Study Physician and has worked with a team which has successfully conducted International Maternal, Paediatric, Adolescents AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT), AIDS Clinical Trials (ACTG) and HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) clinical trials. Currently Dr. Masheto is the CTU Coordinator, IMPAACT Network Project Leader/Principal Investigator (PI) and Molepolole Clinical Research Site Leader. Dr. Masheto is also a Co-Investigator for ACTG and HPTN studies. Dr Masheto graduated from Ross University School of Medicine in 2007 and from Stellenbosch University in 2012 with Post Graduate Diploma in Family Medicine. He is enrolled to Masters (MSc) in Clinical Epidemiology at the London University’s London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Masheto’s interests are in Public health, Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Management with focus on maternal, pediatrics and adolescents populations. He is also interested in research for HIV Cure and he is a fellow for International AIDS Society (IAS) 2018 Academy-for-Cure Research.
GHANA
Chris Guure
LMIC Fellow
Chris is a trained Epidemiologist, Bayesian and frequentist Biostatistician, a researcher and consultant with over eight years of experience. He holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Currently a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Ghana. Chris has worked for various international and national organizations including World Health Organization (WHO), Ghana AIDS Commission, Ghana Health Service, USAID and Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights and others. He has extensive experience working in and continuous to work in a number of areas such as; HIV/AIDs, malaria, maternal and child health, poor and the vulnerable, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, tuberculosis as well as cognitive decline, dementia and its subtypes among older folks. Chris has been involved in and has led a number of research projects as either a Consultant, PI, Co-Investigator, Biostatistician and/or Data Manager in Ghana. In most of the projects, Chris led/leads in the development of the study instruments, training of data collectors, data monitoring, data management/ cleaning, data analysis, interpretation of results and drafting of the study reports.
Daniel Oduro-Mensah
LMIC Fellow
Daniel is a Ghanaian biochemist and academic. He teaches Biochemistry at the University of Ghana, he is a PI at the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens, Ghana and is an Academic Partner of the African Centre of Excellence for Mycotoxin and Food Safety, FUT-Minna, Nigeria. His research interests are mainly in the areas of natural products biochemistry, microbial biotechnology and antimicrobial resistance. Some of his on-going research efforts in natural products biochemistry are designed to contribute to the understanding and management of inflammation-related chronic health conditions, with current focus on RNA virus diseases and pathogen-associated inflammatory sequelae. Since COVID-19, Daniel has been involved in several research initiatives and outreach programs related to the pandemic and has adopted COVID-19 and long COVID as models for his research. In other research, Daniel is working to identify agents with alternative antibacterial activities that can be leveraged to combat the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance. Daniel is excited about his Fogarty Fellowship and looks forward to the new opportunities this period in his career will bring.
Frederica Partey
LMIC Fellow
As a Fogarty global health fellow, Frederica will be working at the West African Centre for Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), University of Ghana under the mentorship of Prof. Gordon Awandare and Prof. Douglas Perkins, University of New Mexico. During the one year fellowship, Frederica seeks to characterize the kinetics and longevity of SARS-CoV-2-specific humoral and cellular responses at baseline and after each dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19(AZD1222) vaccine among Ghanaians. A critical component of any mass vaccination programme is examining vaccine responses across different populations and the longevity of the vaccine-induced immunity under real-world conditions. The efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and the longevity of vaccine-induced immune responses in the sub-Saharan African populations are largely unknown. This work will determine the vaccine efficacy amongst Ghanaian individuals with/without prior exposure to COVID-19 under non-controlled circumstances. Although chronic immune activation has been indicated to hamper acquisition of vaccine-induced immunity against other pathogens, no studies has examined COVID-19 vaccine efficacy against the background of chronic immune activation in African populations.
Jerry Joe Harrison
LMIC Fellow
For Jerry Joe Harrison, a transdisciplinary approach to research and education beginning with an undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of Ghana has been the catalyst and a foundation upon which fundamental understanding of the application of theoretical principles in Chemistry to solving problems has been built. With an interest in Medicinal Chemistry, Dr. Harrison spent his early research career isolating and characterizing natural products from plants from which he birthed into the scientific community. During his MPhil research, he developed protocols and analyzed antimalarial drugs sold in Ghanaian pharmaceutical and chemical shops. During his Ph.D work, he designed protein constructs that enabled the expression, crystallization and the structure of the first retroviral Pol polyprotein, the protease-reverse transcriptase (PR-RT), of the prototype foamy virus. He also designed protein constructs and developed new media that enabled the expression and purification of proteolytically unstable proteins including HIV-1 Gag-Pol and HIV-1 Pol in bacteria.
Under the mentorship of Prof. Gordon A. Awandare and Prof. Douglas J. Perkins, Dr. Harrison will spend his HBNU Fellowship year mostly at the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) characterizing HIV-2 reverse transcriptase (RT)-nucleic acid and RT-nucleic acid-drug complexes that offer insights into the mechanism of catalysis, inhibition and resistance.
Kwabena Sarpong
LMIC Fellow
Dr Sarpong will spend his fellowship year at the University of Ghana in Accra, Ghana under the mentorship of Douglas J. Perkins, PhD. and Lydia Mosi, PhD. His research will focus on the development of a laboratory-based reflexive algorithm for the identification of falciparum and non-falciparum species and its clinical utility in the diagnosis of malaria in Southern Ghana. The project will create a novel working algorithm for clinical practice by utilizing data from the performance characteristics of various malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests on the Ghanaian market and comparing that to microscopy and Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests.
Dr Sarpong received his PhD in Biochemistry from Washington University in St. Louis and completed a clinical chemistry fellowship at the University of Virginia. His research program is dedicated to the strengthening of laboratory systems in Africa through basic science and clinical research. Dr Sarpong has experience in the harmonization of reference intervals for pediatric and adult black populations, proficiency testing/external quality assurance for laboratories in LMICs and performance characteristics of RDTs utilized in resource-limited settings.
Shameka Thomas
US Fellow
Shameka Poetry Thomas, MS, MD is an early-career medical sociologist and reproductive health equity scientist. Dr. Thomas recently completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, spending two-years as an intramural postdoctoral fellow / scientific investigator in the Health’s Health Disparities Unit of the Social Behavioral Research Branch in the National Human Genomics Research Institute (NHGRI). At NIH, her research focused on Black women’s health and patient perceptions of non-invasive prenatal testing as well as integrating social and clinical models into reproductive medicine among Black women with genetic conditions. As an HBNU-Fogarty global health fellow for Harvard University and University of Ghana-East Legon, Dr. Thomas will work in the West African Centre of Cell Biology and Pathogens (WACCIP) in Ghana, where her research focuses on reproductive health equity, narrative medicine, mixed methods, translational research, and sickle cell disease among Black women and teenage girls with rare blood disorders. Dr. Thomas received her PhD in medical sociology from the University of Miami. Dr. Thomas further earned a certification in translational research and a certification in Human and Mammalian Genetics and Genomics from the 62nd McKusick, Jackson Laboratory.
Stephen Amoah
LMIC Fellow
Dr. Stephen Amoah is a lecturer in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He will spend his fellowship year at West African Center for Cell Biology and Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), University of Ghana, under the mentorship of Gordon A. Awandare, PhD. Additionally, he will be at the Center for Global Health, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA, under the mentorship of Douglas J. Perkins, PhD. His research will focus on determining the effect of cocoa on neural noncoding genes such as circular RNAs and microRNAs during inflammation in rodent models of diabetes mellitus. Dr. Amoah’s research goal is to investigate contributions of non-coding genes in the pathophysiology and management of neuropsychiatric and cardiometabolic disorders.
KENYA
Sarah Kituyi
LMIC Fellow
Sarah is a biochemistry lecturer at the University of Embu -Kenya where she teaches clinical biochemistry and supervise postgraduate research. She has a PhD in Biochemistry from Rhodes University, South Africa and a post-doctoral training in cancer biology from the same University. Her current research interests are in protein-protein interactions geared at elucidating interactions in hosts and vectors that influence disease prognosis and how these interactions can be regulated for the great goal of disease diagnosis and management. In her field of research, is it postulated that most of the proteins that influence disease prognosis can be designed into ideal biomarkers for disease stage specific diagnosis. In addition, understanding the mechanisms that drive the differential expression of such proteins can yield clues into the identification of lead drug compounds that can be developed into effective therapy and am currently examining the role of heat shock proteins, their co-chaperones and client proteins in modulating various diseases including cancer, HIV, and malaria.
MALI
Antieme Combo Georges Togo
LMIC Fellow
Dr. Togo will spend his fellowship year at the University of Sciences, Techniques and Technologies of Bamako (USTTB), and then worked as a research associate during eight years in the HIV/TB Research and Training Center (UCRC/SEREFO) department. In 2017, he completed a master’s degree of sciences. He completed his PhD and centered her own research projects on the development of new tools for the diagnosis and management of infectious diseases, specifically drug resistance in TB, the early detection of resistance and mutation gene strategies.
Dr. Togo will be conducting research at the USTTB under the mentorship of Dr Bassirou Diarra Assistant Professor and Head of Tuberculosis and Viral Hemorrhagic BSL-3 Lab at University Clinical Research Center (UCRC). Pr. Mamoudou Maïga, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in Bacteriology and Virology with expertise in molecular microbiology and Biomedical Engineering will be his US mentor.
NIGERIA
Deborah Dauda
US Scholar
Deborah Chat Dauda (she/her) is a mother/dancer/educator/activist and a Ph.D. candidate in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development (SGISD) at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She holds Master’s degrees in Public Health (MPH) and African Studies (MA) from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research agenda as a Black Feminist researcher, scholar-activist, and practitioner is dedicated to the flourishing of Black women and girls. Deborah will spend her fellowship year in Nigeria at the University of Jos in the Department of General and Applied Psychology, under the mentorship of Dr. Christy Denckla and Dr. Haruna Karick. Her research will focus on the Self-care practices and healing strategies of Bajju women with experiences of domestic violence in Southern Kaduna, Nigeria.
She is a recipient of a Fulbright research award to Nigeria, a University of North Carolina (UNC) Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Summer Fellow, and a recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s Lewis and Clark fieldwork grant. Her doctoral research thematically focuses on gender and security matters as it relates to the intersectional experiences and narratives of Black women and girls wherever they are positioned geopolitically. She engages with these issues through the intersection of public health (psychosocial health), the arts (dance), education, and social policy.
Olukemi Ige
LMIC Fellow
Olukemi Ige is an associate professor at the University of Jos and Consultant Pediatrician at the Jos University teaching Hospital in Jos, North- Central Nigeria. She has been involved in collaborative research including the global rheumatic heart disease registry (REMEDY) and understanding the genetics of the rheumatic heart disease (RHDgen). She has also received two seed awards that enabled her carry out research in her area of interest. Presently, her primary research interest is investigating congenital cardiac anomalies and their association with neonatal/ infant mobility and mortality. During her fellowship year, she will be studying cardiac abnormalities in HIV exposed neonates under the mentorship or Prof. Phyllis Kanki and Prof. Atiene Sagay.
Yewande Adeyemo
LMIC Fellow
Yewande Isabella Adeyemo nee Pinheiro is a Paediatric Dentist. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Dental Surgery from the University of Ibadan.
She’s the immediate past Sub-Dean (Academics) of the Faculty of Dentistry, Bayero University, Kano where she lectures 1st and 2nd year clinical students and consults with Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. Her research areas include preventive oral health practices, developing sustainable approaches to improving the oral health-related quality of life, HIV and oral health, dental traumatology, cariology, endodontics, behaviour management, sedation in dentistry, and public health. Contributing positively to improve the oral health and oral health related quality of life of the paediatric age group makes her happy. She loves to cook, travel, meet, and help people.
RWANDA
Alex Zhuang
US Scholar
Alex Zhuang is currently a fourth-year medical student at Boston University hoping to pursue a career in surgical oncology. He was born in the suburbs of Solon, Ohio and moved to Shanghai, China at the age of ten, where he completed his secondary education. He attended Boston College for university where he studied Biology and has remained in Boston ever since to pursue his medical degree. He is passionate about working at the intersection between public health and surgery in both research and advocacy, as well as surgical quality improvement in both global and domestic contexts. Apart from academics he loves sharing, creating, and bringing people together with music and has DJed alongside several international renown artists. He will complete his research at the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), in Rwanda.
Barnabas Alayande
LMIC Fellow
Dr. Barnabas Alayande will spend his fellowship year at the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), Center for Equity in Global Surgery, Kigali, Rwanda under the mentorship of Dean Abebe Bekele; Robert R. Riviello; and Thomas G Weiser. His research will focus on defining gaps in Bellwether procedural skills (cesarean-section, laparotomy, management of open fracture) of recent medical graduates at Rwandan district hospitals, and determining Entrustable Professional Activities for the transition from medical school to district hospital surgical practice in the Rwandan context through the EnTRUST project (Entrustable Professional Activities for The Rwanda Undergraduate in Surgery Today).
Dr. Barnabas is a Global Surgery Fellow and General Surgeon with the Center for Equity in Global Surgery at UGHE, an assistant professor of Surgery with the University of Global Health Equity, and a former Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellow with the Harvard Program in Global Surgery and Social Change. His career focus is to work with a deep commitment to excellent general surgical patient care in Africa with a public health bias, while driving improvisation, contextualized surgery, and disruptive surgical technologies. He seeks to craft a platform from which to pioneer local advances in equity driven surgical education, global surgery research, trauma care, contextualized minimal access surgery, and health management.
Sarah Nuss
US Scholar
Sarah Nuss is from Boston, Massachusetts and is an MD candidate at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University in Providence, RI. Sarah developed an interest in health equity through public health research in Peru and Costa Rica. She went on to work for Partners in Health in Chiapas, Mexico, where she became interested in global surgery systems strengthening. She serves as the Northeast Regional lead for the Global Surgery Student Alliance and is an active member of the Global Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery Initiative. Sarah’s interests include gender disparities, surgical system capacity building, and research equity globally.
SOUTH AFRICA
Ian Mbano
LMIC Fellow
Dr. Ian Mbano is a postdoctoral fellow at the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI), working on a collaborative project involving the Ndung’u and Kwon Labs. His role involves managing an ongoing clinical study that is measuring the efficacy of a live biotherapeutic (LACTIN-V) intervention in reducing inflammation of the vaginal microbiome, which is associated with lower acquisition rates of sexually transmitted infections. Specifically, Ian manages laboratory activities such as Flow cytometry, Luminex and 16S sequencing, which form the cornerstone of the LACTIN-V study. He is a recent recipient of HBNU Fogarty Global Health Fellowship and is interested in using science as a tool to provide positive transformation in the quality of health care delivery in third world nations. He enjoys listening to jazz music, playing basketball and watching football.
Zolelwa Sifumba
LMIC Fellow
Dr Zolelwa Sifumba, a medical doctor who qualified from The University of Cape Town in 2017 and completed her medical internship and community service in rural KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, is currently a Clinical Research Fellow working at the Africa Research Health Institute (AHRI). Zolelwa, who contracted Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis as a young medical student due to occupational exposure, took to the global stage during and after completion of the grueling treatment as an activist and advocate sharing her story with the world, contributing to the global fight against Tuberculosis and is now at AHRI conducting research in the field of Tuberculosis. As a TB advocate, her message for the world to invest in Tuberculosis has been the reminder that we all breath and that all it took for her to be infected; and her life to be changed completely, was one breathe making it an issue that affects us all globally, as we all breath.
As a Fogarty Global Health Fellow, Dr Sifumba will spend the year under the guidance of her mentors Dr Emily Wong MD and Dr Ingrid Basset MD, MPH. Her research interests focus on Subclinical TB and her research proposal is titled Linkage to care and 2-year outcomes for people with asymptomatic TB and TB/HIV: understanding the experience and care-seeking journey of patients diagnosed during community-based screening in rural KwaZulu-Natal; a study drawing on knowledge gathered from a study conducted by AHRI called “Vukuzazi”.
TANZANIA
Anna Tupetz
US Fellow
Dr. Tupetz is a Postdoctoral Associate with the Department of Surgery, Division of Emergency Medicine and the Global Emergency Medicine Innovation and Implementation Research Center (GEMINI) at Duke University School of Medicine. She is also a practicing Physical Therapist, trained in the Netherlands and then received her Doctorate in Physical Therapy, as well as a MSc in Global Health in the United States.
Dr. Tupetz focuses her research work on the challenges and factors impacting access to quality care from the patient as well as provider side, with a special attention on implementation research, qualitative studies and intervention development designs. Given her clinical background, she is particularly interested in the recovery pathway from illness and challenges to accessing as well as providing needed services and support systems.
Ganga Moorthy
US Fellow
Ganga Moorthy is a third year fellow in Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health at Duke University. She completed her undergraduate and medical training at the University of Oklahoma and completed residency and chief residency at Duke. She is currently pursuing a Masters of Science in Global Health through the Duke Global Health Institute. Dr. Moorthy will be working at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania under the mentorship of Dr. Matthew Rubach and Dr. Blandina Mmbaga. Her Fogarty work focuses on the epidemiology and antibacterial resistance patterns of bloodstream isolates in neonatal sepsis and understanding the test characteristics of biomarkers for early identification of neonatal sepsis. Dr. Moorthy’s research interests are in advancing global antimicrobial stewardship and using capacity building to improve morbidity and mortality related to febrile illnesses in children in low-resource settings.
Khanh Pham
US Fellow
Khanh Pham, MD, MS is a board-certified internal medicine and infectious diseases physician at Weill Cornell in New York City, where he is an instructor in medicine. Dr. Pham is conducting clinical research in Tanzania that examines the relationship between schistosomiasis, cardiovascular disease, and tuberculosis under the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer A. Downs. His research efforts have been recognized several times, including receiving a Burroughs Wellcome Fund from the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene. By way of background, Dr. Pham was born in Vietnam and came to the United States at a young age. He grew up in western Massachusetts where he completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and then re-located across town to attend the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. During his time in Worcester, Dr. Pham developed a passion for working with underserved populations. He helped to coordinate the student-run free health clinics, which serve a large number of immigrants living in the Worcester area. Dr. Pham later completed his Internal Medicine residency at Weill Cornell, where he continued to pursue his passion for helping underserved populations by spending a 6-week elective in Mwanza, Tanzania. Given his interests and new-found love for New York, Dr. Pham stayed at Weill Cornell for his Infectious Diseases training and additionally completed a Master’s Program in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research in May 2022.
Virginie Marchard
US Fellow
Virginie Marchand will be spending her Fogarty Global Health Fellowship year at the Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute (KCRI) in Moshi, Tanzania, under the mentorship of Melissa Watt, PhD, Blandina Mmbaga, MD, MMed, PhD, and Susanna Cohen, DNP, CNM, CHSE, FAAN, FACNM. Her research will focus on the implementation and evaluation of a training intervention for labor and delivery providers to address HIV stigma during childbirth. Virginie is a rising third year medical student at Duke University School of Medicine. She is originally from Paris, France and graduated Cum Laude from Duke with a BS in Biology and Global Health. Before beginning her medical education, she worked as a research coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, focusing on antimicrobial resistance policy and access to medicines advocacy, and as a youth work intern at the Tanzanian Children’s Fund in Karatu, Tanzania. After medical school, Virginie plans to complete an Obstetrics & Gynecology residency and pursue a career promoting women’s health and access to care globally.
ZAMBIA
Stanley Zimba
LMIC Fellow
Dr. Stanley Zimba will spend his fellowship year at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia under the mentorship of Omar Siddiqi, MD and Lloyd Mulenga, MBChB, MMED, PhD. His research will focus on clinical characteristics, risk factors and endothelial dysfunction in people with HIV and stroke in Zambia.
Dr. Zimba is a consultant neurologist in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia. He is a budding researcher whose career goal is to contribute to developing, evaluating and implementing innovative and cost-effective interventions for the prevention and treatment of stroke in people with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa and globally.