People in global health news

Fogarty names Steven Smith acting deputy director

Steven T. Smith, who has worked for more than 20 years as a health diplomat for the U.S. government, is Fogarty’s Acting Deputy Director. His most recent post was the United States Mission in Geneva, Switzerland, representing the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). In Geneva, he also represented the United States and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in international negotiations and World Health Organization governing body meetings. Previously, he served as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary in the HHS Office of Global Affairs, HHS Health Attaché to South Africa, HHS Health Attaché to India, Haiti Health Reconstruction Coordinator, director of the NIAID Office of Global Research, and PEPFAR Coordinator in South Africa. Prior to working at HHS, he worked as a State Department Foreign Service Officer in Cameroon, South Africa, and Haiti. Smith is a graduate of Amherst College and Columbia University, and he studied at the University of Nairobi.

Criswell steps down as NIAMS director

Lindsey A. Criswell, MD, DSc, has concluded her service as Director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). As director, she contributed to advancing NIAMS’ research into the causes, treatment, and prevention of arthritis, musculoskeletal, and skin diseases, while leveraging data-driven decision-making and AI tools to refine the institute’s approach to funding and enhancing business operations. Criswell oversaw the projects for rheumatoid arthritis/lupus, autoimmune and immune-mediated diseases of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership, a public-private collaboration among the NIH, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and multiple biopharmaceutical and life science companies. She also directed NIH HEAL Initiative programs for joint and back pain. Criswell will continue to lead her lab within the National Human Genome Research Institute. Prior to joining NIH in 2021, Criswell served as vice chancellor for research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) as well as professor of rheumatology in the UCSF Department of Medicine and professor of orofacial sciences in its School of Dentistry. NIAMS Deputy Director Anna E. Mazzucco, PhD, will serve as the institute’s acting director.

CUGH honors Murphy and Smith with Distinguished Leadership awards

Robert Murphy, MD, a Fogarty advisory board member and professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at Northwestern University, has received a CUGH 2026 Distinguished Leadership in Global Health Award. His research includes development of new antiretroviral drugs and vaccines for HIV and viral hepatitis as well as the scale-up of therapy and point-of-care diagnostics for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, cancers, and emerging infectious diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. He is principal investigator for several Fogarty International Center research training grants and the Center for Innovation in Point-of-Care Technologies for HIV/AIDS and Emerging Infectious Diseases at Northwestern University, which is one of the six centers that comprise the NIH's Point-of-Care Technology Research Network. He is also a member of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering’s Rapid Acceleration for Diagnostics (RADx) Tech III High Performance Steering Panel and RADx HIV Viral Load Panel. Murphy is a member of multiple medical societies, including the Infectious Disease Society of America, and he sits on the boards of several non-profit organizations. Murphy has published more than 350 scientific papers and launched the Biomedical Engineering for Africa textbook, which will publish its second edition in 2026.

Woutrina Smith, DVM, PhD, an agronomist and executive director of the One Health Institute at University of California, Davis (UC Davis), also has received a CUGH 2026 Distinguished Leadership in Global Health Award. She is the associate dean for Global Programs at the School of Veterinary Medicine and a Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at University of California, Davis. Smith previously served as director of the USAID One Health Workforce-Next Generation Project while simultaneously working as co-director of the Planetary Health Center of Expertise for the University of California Global Health Institute. She is recognized for her research spanning One Health, molecular epidemiology, and infectious diseases and has received funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others. Additionally, she has mentored numerous trainees and teaches in UC Davis’ professional and graduate degree programs. Smith, who received her DVM, MPVM, and PhD from UC Davis, has published more than 100 scientific papers.

CUGH honors Ngaruiya and Blas with Mid-Career Leadership awards

Christine Ngaruiya, MD, DTM&H, director of the Stanford Emergency Medicine International Global and Population Health Section, is a recipient of CUGH 2026’s Dr. Thomas Hall-Dr. Nelson Sewankambo Mid-Career Leadership Award. Ngaruiya is currently an Associate Professor in the Stanford Department of Emergency Medicine and previously was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Yale University. Her research interests include noncommunicable diseases and community-based interventions with a particular focus on Africa and her research projects have been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. She has served on multiple NIH panels related to noncommunicable disease topics and is a founding member of the Yale Network for Global Noncommunicable Disease. Most recently, she assisted Kenya’s Ministry of Health through her leadership of a national cross-sectional study assessing burden and risk factors for NCDs. She graduated from University of Nebraska College of Medicine and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Magaly Blas, MD, PhD, a former Fogarty fellow and director of Mamás del Río, Peru, is also a recipient of CUGH 2026’s Dr. Thomas Hall-Dr. Nelson Sewankambo Mid-Career Leadership Award. Blas is an associate professor at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH), Peru, and an affiliate associate professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington, United States. She earned a master’s degree in public health and a doctorate in epidemiology at the University of Washington following completion of her medical degree at UPCH. Her research interests include maternal and child health, HIV prevention, and the epidemiology of HIV, HPV, HTLV, and other sexually transmitted infections. Mamás del Río is an initiative aiming to improve the health of mothers and newborns in rural and remote areas of the Peruvian and Colombian Amazon through the training of community health workers empowered with technology. In 2019, Blas received the Award for Social Innovation in Health from the Pan-American Health Organization. Previously the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early-Career Women Scientists in the Developing World recognized Blas for her work in public health. She also has received the L’Oréal-UNESCO Concytec Award, which recognizes Peruvian scientists for their impact on research.

Global AI prize awarded to Biomni-AD & Prima Mente

The Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative selected two teams—Biomni-AD (a collaboration of Stanford University and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai scientists led by Kuan-lin Huang, PhD) and Prima Mente (an AI biology company based in San Francisco, London, and Dubai)—as co-winners of its 2026 Alzheimer’s Disease Insights AI Prize. Biomni-AD’s winning agentic AI solution acts as a co-scientist for Alzheimer’s research and performs normally time-consuming research tasks in minutes with a higher level of accuracy than general AI models. Prima Mente’s winning modelling and discovery platform, PARTHENON, acts as a virtual “wet lab,” enabling researchers to model experiments using virtual cells plus the support of Athena, an AI co-scientist. This year the competition, originally a solo award of $1 million, expanded to name two winners and double the total prize remuneration to $2 million due to the exceptional quality of submissions and the urgent need for innovation in the field. Importantly, the AI tools of both winning teams will be made freely available to all researchers worldwide through AD Workbench, a flagship data sharing and analytics platform for Alzheimer’s research.