People in global health news

March/April 2024 | Volume 23 Number 2

 

Joshua A. Gordon concludes chapter as NIMH Director

Dr. Joshua A. Gordon will end his tenure as the director of the National Institute of Mental Health on June 14, 2024. He plans to return to Columbia University, as chair of the department of psychiatry and psychiatrist-in-chief at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, while also serving as director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

 

Howard Hiatt, former dean of Harvard School of Public Health, passes

Dr. Howard H. Hiatt, former dean the public health school (now the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health), died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 98. In the early 1960s, he worked as a researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he collaborated with future Nobel laureates on the identification of messenger RNA. 

 

Karl Krupp granted Fulbright Global Scholar Award

Dr. Karl Krupp, University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, will use a Fulbright Global Scholar Award to compare how two cities—Mysore, India, and Stockholm, Sweden—support elderly populations. In Mysore, people in their 60s and 70s consume five times more government-sponsored health care than younger residents; in Stockholm people over 90 have high rates of chronic problems like dementia.

 

Arlotta wins National Academy of Sciences award

Dr. Paola Arlotta of Harvard University was named the 2024 Pradel Research Award recipient for her work providing insights into the principles that guide development of the cerebral cortex, the portion of the brain responsible for cognition. Arlotta is principal investigator on a Fogarty grant studying molecular principles of neuronal maturation and integration in the adult and aging brain.

 

Abdellatif wins travel award from IADR

Enas Belal Abdellatif, Alexandria University, Egypt, has won the 2024 International Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (IADR) Newell Johnson Travel Award. Abdellatif, a teaching assistant and dental public health researcher, aims to help prevent oral diseases, empower those from disadvantaged communities, and minimize oral health inequalities, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

 

Amewu, Birkholtz secure major drug discovery grant

Dr. Richard Amewu, University of Ghana, Dr. Lyn-Marie Birkholtz, University of Pretoria, and a network of scientists have secured a US$7.2 million investment as part of the Grand Challenges Africa Drug Discovery Accelerator. African countries have made remarkable progress in the fight against malaria and tuberculosis, yet these two diseases still kill almost one million people on the continent each year according to the WHO. The funding will bring together African researchers to discover new TB and malaria drugs.

Updated April 12, 2024

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