2017-2018 Fellows

Picture of 2017-2018 Fellows with PIs
HBNU 2017-2018 fellows at NIH orientation in Bethesda, Maryland.

BOTSWANA

Picture of Sikhulile Moyo

Sikhulile Moyo, PhD, MPH, MSc
LMIC Fellow

Dr. Moyo will spend his fellowship at the Botswana-Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP) in Gaborone under the mentorship of Max Essex, DVM, PhD and Simani Gaseitsiwe, PhD. His research will focus on assessing proviral reservoir by ultrasensitive single genome sequencing (uSGS) techniques in HIV infection. Dr. Moyo received his PhD from the Division of Medical Virology at the Stellenbosch University in 2016, where he applied analysis of intrahost viral diversity to estimate recency of HIV infection. He will apply similar techniques to estimate the the size of HIV proviral reservoir.


NIGERIA

Picture of Joseph Anejo-OkopiJoseph Anejo-Okopi PhD, MBA, MSc
LMIC Fellow

Dr. Anejo-Okopi will spend his fellowship year at the University of Jos in Jos under the mentorship of Edith N. Okeke, MD and Claudia Hawkins, MD. His research will focus on molecular characterization of hepatitis B virus genotypes, drug resistance mutations and determination of serum microRNA-122 associated with liver cancer among HIV/HBV
chronic hepatitis B monoinfected patients in Jos, Nigeria. Dr. Anejo-Okopi received his PhD from the department of Microbiology, Ahmadu Beloo University Zaria, Nigeria in 2013, where he studied HIV subtypes and drug resistance mutations in antiretroviral treatment naive patients. He has worked on Helicobacter pyolri in HIV infected adults and children including molecular characterization of Cryptosporidium SPP. He hopes to study HIV co-infected viral infections and cancer as a principal investigator.

Picture of Mark OkoloMark Okolo, MBBS, FWACP, MSC
LMIC Fellow

Dr. Okolo will spend his fellowship year at the Jos University Teaching Hospital and the University of Jos in Jos under the mentorship of Claudia Hawkins, MD and Daniel Egah, MBBS, MSc, FMCPath. His research will focus on molecular characterization of agents of Cryptococcal meningitis in HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected patients in Jos, North-Central
Nigeria. Dr. Okolo completed his Fellowship from the West African College of Physicians in 2013, where he worked on Molecular detection of Candida albicans isolated from patients with vulvovaginal candidiasis. Dr. Okolo hopes to continue to study the molecular epidemiology of fungal diseases in women and children as a principal investigator.


SOUTH AFRICA

Picture of Katherine AntelKatherine Antel, MBChb, MMed, FCP
LMIC Fellow

Dr. Antel will spend her fellowship year at the University of Cape Town in South Africa under the mentorship of Gary Maartens, PhD and Matt Fox, DSc, MPH. Her research will focus on investigating the diagnosis and prognostication of HIV-associated Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She will look at CD68+ macrophages as a possible poor prognostic marker in HIVassociated lymphoma. She hopes to investigate the reasons for diagnostic delay of lymphoma within a TB endemic area, and investigate the role of new TB diagnostic tests which could decrease the diagnostic delay in Hodgkin’s caused by the use of empiric TB therapy. Dr. Antel is a Clinical Hematologist from Cape Town, South Africa.

Picture of Tom BoylesTom Boyles, MD, BM BCh, MA
LMIC Fellow

Dr. Boyles will spend his fellowship year at the University of Cape Town in South Africa under the mentorship of Gary Maartens, PhD and Matthew Fox, DSc, MPH. His research will focus on the diagnosis of tuberculosis in HIV infected patients attending clinics in Cape Town, South Africa; in particular changes in point-of-care CRP as a surrogate marker of
disease. Dr. Boyles received his MD on the implications of hepatic steatosis in chronic hepatitis C from Cardiff University in 2008. Since then he has worked as a full-time clinician in both rural and urban settings in South Africa, becoming a sub-specialist in Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine in 2012. He plans to return to full-time research and continue studying innovative ways of implementing tuberculosis diagnostics in low resource settings.

Picture of Itai MagodoroItai Magodoro, MBBS, MSc 
LMIC Fellow

Dr. Magodoro will spend his fellowship year at the University of Cape Town in South Africa under the mentorship of Goodarz Danaei, MD, ScD and Mphiko Ntsekhe, MD, PhD. His research will focus on the burden and mechanisms of left ventricular diastolic dysfunction among young adults with early life HIV infection. Dr. Magodoro received his medical degree from the College of Medicine, Malawi (2011) and completed graduate clinical epidemiology training at Stellenbosch University, South Africa (2016). He has also completed training fellowships in epidemiology at Erasmus Medical University, The Netherlands (2015), and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/ WHO), France (2014). He hopes to continue studying diastolic dysfunction, a precursor of heart failure and atrial fibrillation, through application of “-omics” and advanced cardiac imaging techniques as a principal investigator.

Picture of Bongiwe NdlovuBongiwe Ndlovu, PhD
LMIC Fellow

Dr. Ndlovu will spend her fellowship year at the Africa Health Research Institute KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban under the mentorship of Thumbi Ndung’u, BVM, PhD, and Bruce Walker, MD. Her research will focus on characterization of humoral immune responses in HIV-1 Subtype C infection. Dr. Ndlovu received her PhD from the HIV Pathogenesis Programme at the University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal in 2017, where she studied thedevelopment of neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibodies in HIV-1 acute infected individuals. She recently received a South African Women in Science award. She hopes to continue to study antibody-mediated effector functions in acute
HIV-1 infection as a principal investigator.

Picture of Sonny PatelSonny Patel, MPH
U.S. Scholar

Mr. Patel will spend his fellowship at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town under the mentorship of Dan Stein, FRCPC, PhD and Catherine Mathews, PhD. His research will focus on two areas: (1) examining previous research on the impact of community cohesion and social support as it applies to mental health illnesses and (2) surveying the current levels of community cohesion and social support among young women and girls in South Africa. Mr. Patel is expected to receive his PhD from the Department of Psychological Medicine at King’s College London, where he studied community resilience as it applies to disasters. He received his BA and MPH from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Southern California, respectively. Mr. Patel is interested in risk and protective factors for mental health illnesses within marginalized, crisis-affected or disaster-affected communities.


TANZANIA

Picture of Fileuka NgakongwaFileuka Ngakongwa, MD, MMED
LMIC Fellow

Dr. Ngakongwa will spend her fellowship year at the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at MUHAS in Dar es Salaam under mentorship of Sylvia Kaaya, MD, MSc, PhD and Mary Kay Smith-Fawzi, ScD. Her research will focus on the impact of psychosocial interventions on transitioning vulnerable youth. Improving psychological well-being is one measure to reduce the burden of mental illnesses, preventing high risk behaviors and improving quality of life. Dr. Ngakongwa received her MMed degree in Psychiatry from the Department of Psychiatry at Stellenbosch University in 2014 and she is a Fellow Member of the College of Psychiatrists of South Africa. She hopes to focus her career on youth mental health, mainly on preventive interventions, access to care and improving social and occupational functioning of youth with severe mental illnesses.


ZAMBIA

Picture of Cephas SialubanjeCephas Sialubanje, MBChB, PhD, MPH 
LMIC Fellow

Dr. Sialubanje will spend his fellowship year at the Zambia Centre for Applied Health Research and Development (ZCAHRD) in Lusaka under the mentorship of Davidson Hamer, MD, Nancy Scott, DrPH, and Gidffrey Buemba, MBChB, MSc. His research will focus on the impact of maternity waiting homes on the quality of antenatal care (ANC) and postnatal care (PNC) quality. Dr. Sialubanje received his medical degree from the University of Zambia in 2002 and his PhD from Maastricht University in The Netherlands in 2016, where he studied global health of the determinants of maternal healthcare service utilization in rural Zambia. He hopes to continue with his studies in global health and to focus on the impact of maternity waiting homes on the antenatal care (ANC) and postnatal care (PNC) quality. He also hopes to determine the cost-effectiveness of maternity waiting home as a model to improve maternal health outcomes.


THAILAND

Picture of Cephas SialubanjeDaria Nikolaeva, DPhil
U.S. Fellow

Dr. Nikolaeva will spend her fellowship year at the Mahidol Vivax Research Unit within the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand under the joint mentorship of Jetsumon Sattabongkot Prachumsri, PhD, Sumi Biswas, DPhil, and Davidson Hamer, MD. Her research will focus on pre-clinical testing of transmission-reducing vaccines against Plasmodium vivax malaria, the most widespread human malaria with greatest disease burden in Southeast Asia and Latin America. In parallel, she will explore the incidence of natural transmission-reducing host immunity in a Thai population to better inform vaccine strategies.

Dr. Nikolaeva is currently a medical student in her final year of the Medical Scientist Training Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. As a trainee on the physician-scientist pathway, her primary research interest is in tracking malaria transmission as well as in translational control initiatives. She received her DPhil from the University of Oxford through the NIH-OxCam Program. Her Bachelor of Science was in Molecular and Cellular Biology, with a concentration in Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. She hopes to continue her training within Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease. She is passionate about health care access and sustainable capacity building in global health research.


INDIA

Picture of Anubha AgarwalAnubha Agarwal, MD 
U.S. Fellow

Dr. Agarwal will spend her fellowship year at the Public Health Foundation of India and Centre for Chronic Disease Control in Delhi under the mentorship of Mark Huffman, MD, MPH and Dorairaj Prabhakaran, MD, DM, MSc. Her research will focus on improving heart failure care in Kerala, India using a mixed methods approach including a multi-institution hospital-based heart failure quality improvement intervention. Dr. Agarwal received her BA from Columbia University and MD from Stanford University School of Medicine. During medical school, she completed the Doris Duke International Clinical Research Fellowship working in Eldoret, Kenya. She is currently a Masters of Global Health Science candidate at Duke University where she is completing her residency in internal medicine. After her fellowship year, she hopes to pursue subspecialty training in cardiology. Her long-term goals are to improve the cardiovascular care of vulnerable populations worldwide through epidemiology, prevention, and implementation science research.

Picture of Sang Gune "Kyle" YooSang Gune “Kyle” Yoo
U.S. Scholar

Mr. Yoo will spend his fellowship year at the Public Health Foundation of India and Centre for Chronic Disease Control in Delhi under the mentorship of Mark Huffman, MD, MPH and Dorairaj Prabhakaran, MD, DM, MSc.  His research will focus on understanding the role of hospital management in acute cardiovascular healthcare quality and safety. Mr. Yoo is a current a fourth year MD candidate at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.  He received his BA in anthropology and biology at the University of Chicago.  After his fellowship year, he hopes to pursue residency and continue his research in health systems.   He hopes to become a clinician and an investigator who works to improve access to high quality care in vulnerable populations.  ​