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The UNC global classroom

Cameron Taylor (’10)

Cameron Taylor is the perfect example of a Carolina undergraduate who is taking full advantage of the university’s commitment to global education. The opportunities and experience she has at UNC are laying the groundwork for a successful future. The junior geography major is getting ready to spend her second summer in Malawi.

Last year, with funding from the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases, Cameron accompanied doctoral student Caryl Feldacker (public health) and UNC Associate Professor of Geography Michael Emch to Lilongwe, Malawi to help develop a geographic information systems database from Malawi census files and satellite imagery. This database will enable researchers at UNC Project-Malawi to better track study participants and reduce loss to follow-up.

Cameron has just been awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) from the Office for Undergraduate Research (OUR). This highly competitive award will allow Cameron to return to Lilongwe, where she will work on a geographic analysis of HIV and malaria. Her work on malaria will assist a massive new multi-site malaria vaccine trial, a partnership between GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, an anti-malaria charity funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and clinics and research centers in Africa, including UNC Project-Malawi.

“Cameron will help design our recruitment strategy based on mapping and population data,” says Irving Hoffman, the international director of UNC Project. “She will teach the Malawi team GPS skills that will help them implement the malaria study.”

Cameron will leave Carolina with impressive research experience and a global perspective not many graduates can claim. After graduation, she plans to attend graduate school in public health. “I envision working for the CDC one day,” Cameron says, “but who knows?”

You can read a story by Cameron about her first trip to Malawi in the Spring 2009 issue of Passport Magazine.

-Story by Lisa Chensvold