Category: IAMIGHID

At UNC Project-Vietnam, Kim Ngan Nguyen, MSc, says her days are genuinely rewarding as she manages implementation studies for IGHID investigators. She describes this as taking proven concepts off the page and turning them into well-run interventions that lead to better health outcomes.  What is your role with UNC Project-Vietnam?...

Ronald Futila Kyong-Shin works in the IDEEL (Infectious Disease Epidemiology Ecology) lab, studying malaria in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He says he enjoys working on projects that impact people’s daily lives, and he especially likes population genetics and evolutionary biology, which can make him feel like a time...

Faith Kanjira is a Regulatory Assistant during her summer break.  She began her journey at UNC in Malawi in 2017 and was later promoted to Regulatory Officer. Her calling is deeply personal to her and has inspired her to do what she does today. The best advice she’s ever been...

Ashenafi Assefa Bahita is a scientist who studies malaria in the IDEEL Lab. He is originally from Ethiopia and came to the US to collaborate with the CDC on his studies on malaria in an advanced laboratory setting. Ashenafi serves as a member of the National Malaria Technical Advisory Committee....

Afreen Hameed works as a research technician in the Archin Lab. Her work in the HIV CURE Center aims to find prevention and cure strategies for HIV. She says the best piece of advice she has received is that not everything is under our control.  What do you do at...

Stewards of Research Funding, Guiding Principal Investigators Toward Success When a principal investigator receives notice of an NIH grant award, the funding goes directly to the applicant’s organization to be administered during the post-award phase. At the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, a team of 10 manages an...

Irving Hoffman is a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases, the International Director of UNC Project-Malawi, and Director of International Operations for the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases (IGHID). With more than 32 years of service to UNC’s global health community, Hoffman has worked in over 19...

The UNC Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) is an engine for funding HIV research, supported by a competitive NIH P30 infrastructure grant that has been successfully renewed since 1998. It is also a consortium of three complementary institutions (UNC, RTI and FHI) as CFAR Director Ron Swanstrom, PhD, and Associate...

Researchers in the Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Ecology Lab (IDEEL) at UNC are process driven investigators with a unique comradery, working in 20+ countries to improve basic understandings of pathogens. The applied nature of their work has a direct impact on the health and well-being of millions of individuals around...

Linda Van Le, MD, is the Leonard D. Palumbo Distinguished Professor of Gynecologic Oncology, and a first generation Vietnamese American who is passionate about training the next generation. Dr. Van Le is a mentor for the International Gynecologic Cancer Society’s Global Gynecologic Oncology Fellowship Program, in Danang, Vietnam. Her grandfather’s...

HIV/AIDS has been around for approximately 40 years, but many researchers say the end is in sight. The question is, will it be in our lifetime or just around the corner? This is a spotlight on the HIV CURE Center, comprising approximately 55 researchers and students, featuring David Margolis, MD, the...

IGHID has a new hub of collaborative work focused on combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR).  Leveraging the Institute’s pan-university framework, the program brings together expertise in basic science, pharmacology, epidemiology, clinical research and environmental studies from schools and departments all across UNC. Led by David van Duin, MD, PhD, Gauri Rao,...

Dana Giandomenico, MPH, CPH, REHS, is the program manager for vector-borne diseases. She joined the Institute in June 2021, to support Drs. Ross Boyce, Emily Ciccone, and others working in Uganda. Her office is currently in the Carolina Population Center, off Franklin Street, where Dr. Boyce has an appointment. In her free...

Tran Viet Ha, MD, MSc, is the in-country director of UNC Vietnam and an assistant professor in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. She’s also coordinator for the Institute’s Clinical Research Site (CRS) in Hanoi. The CRS started as a site for HIV prevention studies but has more recently...

Erin Hoffman is the Operations Manager for the Institute’s Chapel Hill Clinical Research Site (CRS), one of four research sites supporting IGHID’s Clinical Trials Unit. She learned about HIV from two people who were living openly with the disease, and it was their inspiring stories that would later influence her career path....

Cecilia Kanyama, MB, BS, is a physician-scientist with UNC-Project Malawi who teaches at the University of Malawi College of Medicine, and her work is changing world health guidelines and policy. She completed her first years of medical school in Australia and her postgraduate training with the University of Cape Town in South...

Weiming Tang, PhD, promotes social innovations in health, using crowdsourcing that inspires the creation of equitable and effective health services, as well as pay-it-forward approaches that show how kindness can be contagious in healthcare. As co-director of Project China, Weiming has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications. And when it comes...

If the Institute is the engine that drives global health research at UNC, the Grant Administration team might just be the drivetrain, bringing all the structural components that deliver energy and create momentum. This is a spotlight on a team of rock stars who feel pride in their mission, who...

Regulatory Affairs (RA) plays a critical role throughout the grant lifecycle, ensuring protocol integrity in the development of drugs and vaccines on the path to human use. Joelle Howard, who goes by Jo, joined IGHID last June. She is one of three regulatory document specialists who work across departments, schools,...