Appendix C

Speaker Biographies

Gene Bukhman, M.D., Ph.D., is a cardiologist and medical anthropologist who heads the Program in Global Noncommunicable Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School. He is an assistant professor of medicine and an assistant professor of global health and social medicine. He is also the senior health and policy advisor on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) at Partners In Health (PIH) where he directs the NCD Synergies project. He is an attending cardiologist in the Cardiovascular Division and the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is director of the BWH Fellowship in Cardiovascular Disease and Global Health Equity. He is also the co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Reframing NCDs and Injuries for the Poorest Billion (NCDI Poverty Commission). Dr. Bukhman completed his medical training and doctorate in medical anthropology at the University of Arizona in 2001, during which time he studied the politics of tuberculosis control in the former Soviet Union. He completed his internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2003, and his cardiology fellowship at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2007. For the past 15 years, his career has focused on the NCD and injury (NCDI) burden among those living in extreme poverty, with a particular focus on low-income countries. His research explores both the political and historical context of NCDI interventions, as well as the development and implementation of integrated strategies to deliver these interventions. He was the senior technical advisor to the Ministry of Health of Rwanda between 2010 and 2015, and has worked with Health Ministry NCD divisions in many low- and lower-middle income countries. He is frequently invited to speak regarding NCDs, poverty, and development. He is lead author and editor of

the PIH Guide to Chronic Care Integration for Endemic NCDs (2011). In 2011, the University of Arizona Honors College named him Alumnus of the Year. In 2015, Dr. Bukhman was chosen to be a member of the Financing Working Group of the World Health Organization’s Global Coordination Mechanism on NCDs.

Dennis Carroll, Ph.D., currently serves as director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Global Health Security and Development Unit. In this position, Dr. Carroll is responsible for providing strategic and operational leadership for the agency’s programs addressing new and emerging disease threats. Dr. Carroll also serves as USAID’s Special Representative for Global Health Security. Dr. Carroll was initially detailed to USAID from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a senior public health advisor in 1991. In 1995, he was named the agency’s senior infectious diseases advisor, responsible for overseeing the agency’s programs in malaria, tuberculosis, antimicrobial resistance, and disease surveillance, as well as neglected and emerging infectious diseases. In this capacity Dr. Carroll was directly involved in the development and introduction of a range of new technologies for disease prevention and control, including community-based delivery of treatment of onchocerciasis, rapid diagnostics for malaria, new treatment therapies for drug-resistant malaria, intermittent therapy for pregnant women, and “long-lasting” insecticide-treated bed nets for prevention of malaria. He was responsible for the initial design and development of the President’s Malaria Initiative. Dr. Carroll officially left CDC and joined USAID in 2005 when he assumed responsibility for leading the USAID response to the spread of avian influenza. Dr. Carroll has a doctorate in biomedical research with a special focus in tropical infectious diseases from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was a research scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where he studied the molecular mechanics of viral infection. Dr. Carroll has received awards from both CDC and USAID, including the 2006 USAID Science and Technology Award for his work on malaria and avian influenza, and the 2008 Administrator’s Management Innovation Award for his management of the agency’s Avian and Pandemic Influenza program.

Julia Critchley, M.P.H., Ph.D., is a professor of epidemiology at St. George’s, University of London, with 20 years of experience working in cardiovascular disease and diabetes epidemiology and public health. She holds a Ph.D. in epidemiology (Oxford University) and an M.P.H. (University of London). For the past 10 years, her research program has focused on the association between common chronic and infectious diseases such as diabetes (DM) and tuberculosis (TB). As part of the recent European Commission (EC) FP7–funded TANDEM consortium, she helped develop and evaluate methods

to screen for DM in TB patients, including both standard DM markers and risk scores; this highlighted the heterogeneity between different populations and some challenges with screening and follow-up for DM during TB care. Dr. Critchley also co-led a project funded by the Qatari National Research Foundation using mathematical modeling to estimate the population impact of increasing DM prevalence on TB control and the potential effects of structural and clinical interventions on future joint disease burdens. The project found that more than 30 percent of TB incidence and 40 percent of TB mortality could be attributable to DM in countries like India in the future; however, improvements in DM control or preventive interventions targeted at people living with DM (such as TB vaccines, or treatment for latent TB) could ameliorate a substantial amount of this population burden. In the United Kingdom, she has investigated the effect of DM on infection risks and outcomes using large datasets from primary care, finding that one in six infection-related deaths or hospitalizations can be attributed to poor DM control, even in this high-income population; she continues to investigate the effects of instability in DM control on infection risks. Dr. Critchley recently co-authored joint International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD)/World Diabetes Foundation guidelines for TB-DM, aimed at frontline health care workers, and she continues to support IUATLD efforts to ameliorate this double burden.

Peter Daszak, Ph.D., is president of EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), a U.S.based organization that conducts research and outreach programs on global health, conservation, and international development. Dr. Daszak’s research has been instrumental in identifying and predicting the effect of emerging diseases across the globe. His achievements include identifying the bat origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome; identifying the underlying drivers of Nipah and Hendra virus emergence; producing the first ever global emerging disease “hotspots” map; developing a strategy to find out how many unknown viruses exist that could threaten to become pandemic; identifying the first case of a species extinction attributable to disease; and discovering the disease chytridiomycosis as the cause of global amphibian declines. Dr. Daszak is a member and chair-elect of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Forum on Microbial Threats. He is a member of the National Research Council (NRC) Advisory Committee to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Supervisory Board of the One Health Platform, the One Health Commission Council of Advisors, the Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases External Advisory Board, the Cosmos Club, and the Advisory Council of the Bridge Collaborative; has served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Global Surveillance for Emerging Zoonoses, the NRC Committee on the Future of Veterinary Research, the International Standing Advisory Board of the

Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre; and has advised the director for Medical Preparedness Policy on the White House National Security Staff on global health issues. Dr. Daszak is a regular advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Organisation for Animal Health, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and is actively involved in the WHO Expert Group on Public Health Emergency Disease Prioritization. Dr. Daszak won the 2000 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation medal for collaborative research on the discovery of amphibian chytridiomycosis. He is the EHA institutional lead for the U.S. Agency for International Development–Emerging Pandemic Threats–PREDICT; on the editorial board of Conservation Biology, One Health, and Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene; and editor-in-chief of the journal Ecohealth. He has authored more than 300 scientific papers, and his work has been the focus of extensive media coverage, ranging from popular press articles to television appearances.

Marcos Espinal, M.D., Dr.P.H., M.P.H., is director of the Department of Communicable Diseases and Health Analysis at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Americas. Dr. Espinal, a national of the Dominican Republic, holds a medical degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1985). He has an M.P.H. (1990) and a Dr.P.H. (1995) from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. His work experience includes positions in the Ministry of Health of the Dominican Republic and the National Center for Research on Maternal and Child Health; the New York City Public Health Department; and WHO, where he worked for 13 years. Before joining PAHO, Dr. Espinal served as executive secretary of the WHO Stop TB Partnership, a global movement aiming at the elimination of TB as a public health problem. Dr. Espinal has published more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in the field of communicable diseases. He is a recipient of the Scientific Prize of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease; the Walter and Elise A. Hass International Award by the University of California, Berkeley, for a distinguished record of service in international health; and the Princess Chichibu Memorial Tuberculosis Global Award by the Japan Anti-Tuberculosis Association.

Patricia J. García, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., is a professor at the School of Public Health at Cayetano Heredia University (UPCH) in Lima, Peru. She is the former minister of health of Peru, former dean of the School of Public Health at UPCH, and former chief of the Peruvian National Institute of Health. She is recognized as a leader in global health, has been a member of the Pan American Health Organization Foundation Technical Advisory

Group, and was a board member of the Consortium of Universities in Global Health and President of the Latin American Association Against STDs. She is affiliate professor of the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington and the School of Public Health at Tulane University. She is actively involved in research and training in global health, reproductive health, sexually transmitted infection/HIV, human papillomavirus, and medical informatics. She has been recently appointed as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, becoming the first Peruvian professional with such a distinction.

John B. Harley, M.D., Ph.D., has followed a career focusing on the genetic and environmental etiologies of autoimmune diseases, especially systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). His training experiences include an M.D. and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; a postdoctoral fellowship at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in tumor virology; a medical residency at Yale University; and clinical investigator fellowships at the National Institutes of Health in allergy and immunology and rheumatology, hosted by the Laboratory of Clinical Investigation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. These were followed by faculty appointments at the University of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and then at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati. His early career work on the immunochemistry of SLE autoimmunity identified the earliest autoantigenic structures and nominated the heteroimmune response to Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigen 1 as the origin for selected autoimmune responses in SLE. This was followed by more than two decades of work on the genetic origins of SLE that has contributed important contributions to the discovery of the more than 100 loci convincingly associated with SLE now known. He became the founding director of the Center for Autoimmune Genomics and Etiology at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in 2010, which has the overall goal of establishing the etiology of autoimmune disease.

Bridget B. Kelly, M.D., Ph.D., is the principal consultant of Burke Kelly Consulting, specializing in research and evaluation, policy analysis, strategy development, stakeholder engagement, and facilitation. She worked previously at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for 8 years leading a portfolio of projects that included early childhood, mental health, chronic diseases, HIV, and evaluation science. Among other projects, she was the study director for the 2010 report Promoting Cardiovascular Health in the Developing World and the study co-director for the 2013 Evaluation of PEPFAR. In her last position at the National Academies she served as the interim director of the Board on Children, Youth, and Fami-

lies. More recently, she co-founded the nonprofit Bridging Health & Community, with the mission of helping the health sector work more effectively with communities. Originally trained in medicine and developmental neurobiology, she received an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Duke University and a B.A. from Williams College. She is also an experienced dancer, choreographer, and arts administrator.

Kent E. Kester, M.D., is currently vice president and head of Translational Science and Biomarkers at Sanofi Pasteur. During a 24-year career in the U.S. Army, he worked extensively in clinical vaccine development and led multiple research platforms at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the U.S. Department of Defense’s largest and most diverse biomedical research laboratory—an institution he later led as its commander/director. His final military assignment was as the associate dean for clinical research in the School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS). Dr. Kester holds an undergraduate degree from Bucknell University and an M.D. from Jefferson Medical College. He completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Maryland and a fellowship in infectious diseases at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. A malaria vaccine researcher with more than 70 scientific manuscripts and book chapters to his name, Dr. Kester has played a major role in the development of the malaria vaccine candidate known as RTS,S. Currently a member of the U.S. Government Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, he previously chaired the Steering Committee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)-USUHS Infectious Disease Clinical Research Program, and has served as a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biologics Products Advisory Committee, the NIAID Advisory Council, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Office of Infectious Diseases Board of Scientific Counselors. Board certified in both internal medicine and infectious diseases, he holds faculty appointments at USUHS and the University of Maryland, and he is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Sylvester Kimaiyo, M.D., has been involved in all aspects of the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) since its inception in 2001. AMPATH represents a collaborative partnership among Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Moi University College of Health Sciences, and a North American consortium led by Indiana University. AMPATH initially was HIV focused but has expanded into chronic diseases. It is one of the largest and comprehensive HIV care and research institutions.

Rob Knight, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation and professor of pediatrics, bioengineering, and computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Follow Your Gut: The Enormous Impact of Tiny Microbes (Simon & Schuster, 2015), and co-author of Dirt Is Good: The Advantage of Germs for Your Child’s Developing Immune System (St. Martin’s Press, 2017). He cofounded the Earth Microbiome Project, and the American Gut Project, which is among the largest crowdfunded science projects of any kind to date. He has spoken at TED and Davos, written 3 books and more than 600 scientific articles, and in 2017 he won the Massry Prize, often considered a predictor of the Nobel. His work has linked microbes to a range of health conditions, including obesity and inflammatory bowel disease, has enhanced our understanding of microbes in environments ranging from the oceans to the tundra, and has made high-throughput sequencing techniques accessible to thousands of researchers around the world.

Casey Lynch, M.S., is chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Cortexyme, Inc., a clinical-stage company developing novel potential therapeutics for Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases. Previously, Ms. Lynch was the co-founder and managing partner of NeuroInsights, an investment advisory firm focused on neuropharmaceuticals and neurodevices. She was also the co-founder, president, and CEO of Aspira Biosystems, Inc., a proteomics company. Prior to 4 years building Aspira, Ms. Lynch oversaw toxicology screening and evaluated new product opportunities at Centaur Pharmaceuticals, where she managed animal screening protocols for a novel nitrone small molecule library. She has a scientific background in disease research, drug discovery, and cell biology. Ms. Lynch conducted preclinical testing for Alzheimer’s disease treatment at the Wadsworth Medical Center and researched the neurological basis of schizophrenia and epilepsy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her graduate work on neurotrophic factor cell biology and neurodegenerative diseases was carried out in Mobley lab at the University of California, San Diego, and Stanford University. Ms. Lynch holds a B.S. in neuroscience from UCLA and an M.S. in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco. She has also completed the Management Development for Entrepreneurs.

Emily Mendenhall, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a medical anthropologist and a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor in the Science, Technology, and International Affairs Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Dr. Mendenhall’s scholarship focuses on how social trauma, poverty, and social exclusion become embodied in chronic mental and physical illness as well as the theory and concept of syndemics. Her most recent project is a book forthcoming with Cornell

University Press (2019), Rethinking Diabetes: Entanglements of Trauma, Poverty, and HIV. Dr. Mendenhall is also the author of Syndemic Suffering: Social Distress, Depression, and Diabetes among Mexican Immigrant Women (Routledge, 2012), and in 2017, led a series of articles on syndemics in the Lancet journal. For several years, Dr. Mendenhall has been engaged with the movement for global mental health. She co-edited a book with Dr. Brandon Kohrt titled Global Mental Health: Anthropological Perspectives (Routledge, 2015), along with a companion article published in Lancet Psychiatry (2016). In 2016, she co-organized an international conference titled Global Mental Health: Transdisciplinary Perspectives at Georgetown University and collaborated with and contributed to small projects associated with the Programme for Improving Mental Health Care (PRIME) and with the Africa Mental Health Foundation. She holds an Honorary Appointment in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she mentors Ph.D. students and conducts research projects, primarily in the Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit located at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. In 2017, she was awarded the George Foster Award for Practicing Medical Anthropology by the Society for Medical Anthropology. The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center, the South African Medical Research Council, and her research institutions have all supported Dr. Mendenhall’s work. Most recently, she has benefited from many small grants from Georgetown University from the School of Foreign Service Dean’s Office, Provost Office, Global Futures Initiative, Global Environmental Initiative, and the Global Health Initiative.

Mosa Moshabela, Ph.D., M.Sc., M.B.Ch.B., M.Fam.Med., Dip.HIV (SA), is currently the associate professor and dean in the School of Nursing and Public Health, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. A qualified physician in family medicine and primary health care, he works as a chief medical specialist in rural health medicine, and a public health scientist in health services, systems, and policy in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, with the aim of improving access, quality, and equity in health care. His current research portfolio on implementation science and people-centered approaches seeks to design, implement, and evaluate complex interventions in public health care services and programs in ways appropriate for resource-poor settings in sub-Saharan Africa. He is adjunct faculty and a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Africa Health Research Institute, South Africa. He collaborates with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and conducts research in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. His current research is funded by the National Research Foundation (South Africa), the Medical Research Council (United Kingdom), the Wellcome Trust (United Kingdom), and the National Institutes of Health (United States). He is a member (2018–2020)

of the Lancet Commission on Synergies between Health Promotion, Universal Health Coverage, and Global Health Security; a U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee member (2018–2020) on Human Resources for Health in Rwanda; and the current national chairperson (2016–2019) of the Rural Doctors Association of South Africa. He was previously the regional health systems advisor for the Millennium Villages in West and Central Africa, based at the MDG Centre in Mali/Senegal, working with the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Prior to the Earth Institute, he was a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where he was also director of the Rural AIDS and Development Action Research Programme.

Cathryn R. Nagler, Ph.D., is the Bunning Food Allergy Professor and professor of pathology, medicine, and pediatrics at The University of Chicago. She graduated with honors from Barnard College, Columbia University. Dr. Nagler obtained her Ph.D. from the Sackler Institute of Biomedical Science at the New York University School of Medicine and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was associate professor of pediatrics (immunology) at Harvard Medical School prior to joining The University of Chicago in 2009. Dr. Nagler has participated in numerous review panels for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, including the Food Allergy Expert Panel. She is in her second term on the research advisory board for Food Allergy Research and Education. She has served the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) as section editor for the Journal of Immunology, instructor for the Introduction to Immunology and Advanced Immunology courses, and as member of the Program, Clinical Immunology, Publications and Awards Committees. She was an inaugural senior editor for AAI’s new journal ImmunoHorizons. She is currently deputy editor for the Journal of Immunology. She has also served as an elected Councilor of the Society for Mucosal Immunology and is an associate editor of the journal Mucosal Immunology. She recently began teaching in the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) Advanced Course in Basic and Clinical Immunology and joined the FOCIS Education Committee. Dr. Nagler has a long-standing interest in the mechanisms governing tolerance to dietary antigens and the potential immunomodulatory features of the oral route of antigen administration. Her most recent work examines how commensal bacteria regulate susceptibility to allergic responses to food. She has applied insights gained from studying preclinical gnotobiotic murine models of cow’s milk allergy to launch a new company, ClostraBio, which is developing microbiome-modulating therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of food allergy.

Rachel Nugent, Ph.D., is vice president for Global Noncommunicable Diseases at RTI International. She leads a global initiative to prevent and reduce the health and economic burdens of chronic noncommunicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries. Prior to this position, Dr. Nugent was associate professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington and director of the Disease Control Priorities Network. She received her M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. She is a member of multiple advisory panels, including the World Health Organization Expert Panel on Management of Cardiovascular Disease, and currently serves on the Lancet Commission on NCDIs (Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries) of the Poorest Billion. She recently was on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Workshop Planning Committee on Global Obesity.

Catherine Oldenburg, M.P.H., Sc.D., is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Her work focuses on antibiotic distribution strategies to prevent infectious morbidity and mortality and the epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance among children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Tolullah Oni, M.B.B.S., M.R.C.P., M.P.H., M.D., F.C.P.H.M., is a public health physician scientist and urban epidemiologist, and a clinical senior research fellow with the University of Cambridge’s Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit’s Global Public Health Research program. She completed her medical training at University College London, postgraduate medical training in the United Kingdom and Australia, a Master’s in Public Health (epidemiology) at the University of Cape Town, and her research doctorate in clinical epidemiology at Imperial College London. She spent 11 years conducting research in South Africa, where she also completed her public health medical specialty training. There, she established a Research Initiative for Cities Health and Equity, conducting transdisciplinary urban health research focused on generating evidence to support development and implementation of healthy public policies in rapidly growing cities with a focus on Africa. Research activities include Systems for Health projects: investigating how urban systems (e.g., housing, food) can be harnessed for health; and health systems projects: integrated health systems responses to changing patterns of disease and multimorbidity in the context of urbanization. She continues this focus within the Global Diet and Activity Research Group and Network, focusing on meso- and macrolevel determinants of diet and physical activity. She has published more than 40 manuscripts in high-impact journals, and has given presentations at international academic (urban health, HIV, tuberculosis) and nonacademic meetings, including the

United Nations High-Level Political Forum for Sustainable Development, New York; and the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Davos, 2018. She serves on several advisory boards, including Future Earth and the African Academy of Science Open Research Platform, and is an editorial board member of Lancet Planetary Health, Cities and Health, and the Journal of Urban Health. Profiled in the Lancet journal in 2016, she is a 2015 Next Einstein Forum fellow, and fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.

Julie Parsonnet, M.D., is the George Deforest Barnett Professor in Medicine and professor of health and research and policy (epidemiology) at Stanford University. She specializes in adult infectious diseases. She has a particular interest in gastrointestinal infections, including H. pylori infection and diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, and illnesses with prolonged fever. Dr. Parsonnet also has an active research enterprise in which she studies the way infections contribute to the development of chronic diseases, including cancer, allergy, and obesity. She has had continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health for more than 25 years and has served as a member of numerous advisory boards, professional societies, and scientific review committees.

Miriam Rabkin, M.D., M.P.H., is an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She has worked in global health for 20 years, focusing on strengthening health systems to improve the delivery of prevention, care, and treatment services for underserved populations. As the director for Health Systems Strategies at ICAP Columbia, she works to design, implement, and evaluate HIV and related health programs in low-resource settings, largely in sub-Saharan Africa. As a consultant to The Rockefeller Foundation, she worked with the Transforming Health Systems initiative on issues related to health systems strengthening and universal health coverage. From 2011 to 2014, she led The President’s Fund for AIDS Relief’s flagship course on health systems strengthening, in partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Her current research focuses on implementation science and on ways in which to leverage the successes and lessons of HIV scale-up to strengthen broader health systems, and to enhance the quality of programs for HIV, maternal/child health, noncommunicable diseases, and infection prevention and control. She also leads several training and education projects and oversees ICAP’s Quality Improvement portfolio. Dr. Rabkin has a B.A. from Harvard College, an M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, and an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Naveen Rao, M.D., is the managing director for health and senior advisor to the president of The Rockefeller Foundation, and is leading a team focused on putting new digital tools in the hands of community health providers to reduce child and maternal deaths and better protect against the rapidly growing burden of noncommunicable diseases and pandemic threats. As senior advisor to the Foundation’s president, Dr. Rao provides strategic counseling and executive engagement to help advance the Foundation’s mission. For decades, Dr. Rao has been a leader in equipping health care providers with the skills, tools, and technologies they need to succeed. He has held numerous leadership positions at Merck & Co., Inc., and was previously head of Medical Affairs for Merck’s Asia-Pacific region and managing director of Merck’s subsidiary in India. Most recently, he led Merck for Mothers, where his work reached and empowered more than 6 million women, improving outcomes for safe pregnancies and healthy deliveries around the world. Board certified in internal medicine, Dr. Rao was associate director of the Department of Medicine at Lower Manhattan Hospital (formerly Beekman Downtown Hospital) in New York City and practiced medicine in New York for 10 years prior to joining Merck. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the Board of Overseers of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, a member of the Board of Directors of GBC Health, and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Health and Healthcare. He is also the private-sector representative on the Investors Group of the Global Financing Facility that supports country-led efforts to improve the health of women, children, and adolescents globally.

K. Srinath Reddy, M.D., D.M., M.Sc., is president of the Public Health Foundation of India and formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Dr. Reddy is the first Indian to be elected as a foreign associate member of the National Academy of Medicine. He served as the first Bernard Lown Visiting Professor of Cardiovascular Health at the Harvard School of Public Health (2009–2013). He is presently an adjunct professor at Harvard and Emory, and Honorary Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney. He has served on many World Health Organization (WHO) expert panels and has been the president of the World Heart Federation (2013–2014). He chaired the High-Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage for the Planning Commission of India. Dr. Reddy is a member of the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, established to assist the United Nations in developing the post-2015 goals, and chairs the Thematic Group on Health in the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He is a member of the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition. He has published more than 500 scientific papers. Dr. Reddy’s several honors include

the WHO Director General’s Award, the Luther Terry Medal of American Cancer Society for Outstanding contributions to global tobacco control, and the Queen Elizabeth Medal for health promotion. He was conferred Padma Bhushan by the President of India in 2005. Dr. Reddy has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of London, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Lausanne, N.T. Rama Rao Health Sciences, and the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences.

Nelson Sewankambo, M.B.Ch.B., M.Sc., M.Med., F.R.C.P., is the president of the African Medical Schools Association. He is also a professor of medicine, trained in general medicine and internal medicine at Makerere University, Uganda, and later in clinical epidemiology at McMaster University, Canada. From 1997, for 11 years, he served as the Medical School dean at Makerere University, and since then has been principal (head) of College of Health Sciences. He is a board member for the Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research, a fellow of the World Academy of Sciences, and an external affiliate member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. He serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Global Forum on Innovations in Health Professional Education. He is the principal investigator on a multicountry research capacity-building consortium involving seven African institutions and two universities in the United Kingdom (Cambridge University and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine). He is the chair of an Africa-wide initiative for Strengthening Research Capacity in Africa, the director of the Medical Education for Equitable Services for All Ugandans–Medical Education Partnership Initiative Consortium, and chair of the African Medical Schools Association.

Christoph A. Thaiss, M.Sc., Ph.D., is assistant professor at the Microbiology Department of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He performed his undergraduate studies in molecular biomedicine at the University of Bonn, Germany, and his M.Sc. studies in microbiology and immunology at Yale University and ETH Zurich, Switzerland. After a short-term scholarship at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, he performed his graduate studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, with a visiting fellowship at Stanford University. After completion of his graduate work, he established his research group at the University of Pennsylvania. His lab studies the role of host–environment interactions in metabolic and inflammatory diseases, with a particular focus on the role of the intestinal microbiota in the regulation of host physiology.

Jay K. Varma, M.D., is the senior advisor to Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. He develops strategy and supports implementation of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s programs in surveillance, emergency preparedness and response, information systems, laboratory systems, and workforce development. After graduating magna cum laude with highest honors from Harvard, Dr. Varma completed medical school, internal medicine residency, and chief residency at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. From 2001 to 2017, he worked on infectious diseases prevention and control for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with postings in Atlanta, Bangkok, Beijing, and New York City. Dr. Varma has authored 126 scientific manuscripts, 6 essays, and 1 book. He has been recognized as the U.S. Public Health Service Physician Researcher of the Year (2010) and Physician Leader of the Year (2017), and has received the two highest awards in the U.S. Public Health Service: the Distinguished Service Medal (2011) and the Meritorious Service Medal (2018).