People in the news April 2013

UN promotes former Fogarty AITRP trainee Loures

The U.N. has appointed Dr. Luiz Loures to Deputy Executive Director of Program in its HIV/AIDS agency (UNAIDS) and also promoted him to U.N. Assistant Secretary-General. Loures, a former Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP) participant, helped establish Brazil's national AIDS program.

Dr. Luiz Loures

Dr. Steven Smith

Smith is to be US health attache in South Africa

Steven Smith will be the next health attache at the U.S. embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, where he will handle matters related to health cooperation and social policy. Smith, previously at the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), currently is health attache in New Delhi, India.

NIBIB's Pettigrew is honored for science achievements

Dr. Roderic Pettigrew, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at NIH, has received the 2013 Pierre Galletti award for raising U.S. public awareness and interest in the field, and for his research in cardiovascular diagnostics and treatment strategies. This is the top award from the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Dr. Roderic Pettigrew

Dr. Thomas Insel

NIMH's Insel is awarded for government service

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Director Dr. Thomas Insel has been recognized for his insight into the autism spectrum and obsessive compulsive disorders, receiving the American Medical Association's Dr. Nathan Davis Award for Outstanding Government Service.

Kutlesic heads NICHD global health office

Dr. Vesna Kutlesic has been named director of the global health office of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at NIH. Kutlesic, who had been acting chief, is a clinical psychologist and was previously on the faculty at Case Western Reserve University. She has also consulted for UNICEF on child health and behavioral services in Eastern Europe.

Dr. Vesna Kutlesic

Dr. Dionicia Gamboa

Fogarty committee's Gamboa receives award

Dr. Dionicia Gamboa, of Peru's Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, was named as a recipient of the 2013 Elsevier Foundation Award for Early Career Women Scientists in the Developing World, for her research in leishmaniasis and malaria. Gamboa served on the executive committee of Fogarty's Global Infectious Diseases training grant program.

Former Fogarty Scholar Ketunuti is mourned

Dr. Melissa Ketunuti, a pediatrician and infectious diseases researcher at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, was recently found murdered in her home. Ketunuti had been a Fogarty-Ellison scholar in Botswana, conducting HIV/AIDS research.

Dr. Melissa Ketunuti