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ASM LabCap Attends the 2009 HIV/AIDS Implementer's Meeting in Windhoek  

ASM International Affairs Program Manager Mah-Sere Keita Sow participated at the 2009 HIV/AIDS Implementers' Meeting, held from 10-14 June 2009 in Namibia; the meeting drew more than 1,500 HIV/AIDS implementers from more than 55 countries around the world to Windhoek. The 2009 HIV/AIDS Implementers' Meeting was hosted by the Government of Namibia and cosponsored by the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR); the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; UNAIDS; UNICEF; the World Bank; the World Health Organization; and the Global Network of People Living with HIV.   

The President of the Republic of Namibia, H.E. Hifikepunye Pohamba, opened the meeting, which had as its theme this year "Optimizing the Response: Partnerships for Sustainability." Recognizing the importance of a sustainable global AIDS response, the focus of this year's meeting was on optimizing the impact of prevention, treatment, and care programs; enhancing program quality; promoting coordination among partners; and encouraging innovative responses to the pandemic.  

The meeting committee selected 345 abstracts which were presented by representatives from governments, nongovernmental organizations including faith- and community-based groups, multilateral organizations, the private sector, and groups of people living with HIV/AIDS; the abstracts described research, lessons learned, and best practices documented during the implementation of multi-sectoral HIV/ AIDS programs worldwide. The meeting's six research tracks included Responding to Challenges in HIV Prevention; Women and Children; Effective HIV Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support Programs for Men who Have Sex with Men, Drugusers, People in Prisons, and People in Sex Work; Evolving Challenges in Treatment, Laboratory, Care and Support Services; Performance-based Programming and Systems- strengthening; and Cross-cutting Issues.  

labcapSow was invited to participate as a presenter of the ASM LabCap-approved poster presentation, "Optimizing Clinical Laboratory Diagnosis of Bacterial Opportunistic Infections in a Central Hospital Laboratory in Mozambique," which fell under the laboratory research track. The poster, which drew significant attention from meeting delegates, highlighted ASM LabCap's efforts to improve clinical microbiology diagnosis at Hospital Central de Maputo via longterm onsite mentoring, shortterm offsite mentoring, and workshop presentation.  

Throughout the conference, the current state of the global economy was heavily emphasized as a further incentive for looking to partnerships for resource leveraging and for seeking and implementing sustainable activities. Furthermore, the need for programs to be locally owned and for increased leadership from host nations was an additional underlying theme of the meeting. Following the four days of important exchanges, discussions, plenary sessions, and presentations, the meeting closed by providing the delegates with renewed energy for moving activities forward and additional ideas for ameliorating their implementation efforts.  

 

Development of this publication was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number U62/CCU325119-04 from the Department of Health and Human Services/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHSTP), Global AIDS Program (GAP). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of CDC.  


2009 ASM International Affairs Fellowship and Professorship Recipients  

ASM International Education Committee (IEC) is pleased to announce the winners of Round Two of the 2009 Fellowships and Professorships. The programs strive to put the IEC's Strategic Plan into action by providing high-quality education and training programs to microbiologists and institutions at all levels, fostering the professional development of international microbiologists, and promoting excellence in the microbiological sciences through scholarly exchange. To learn more about how to apply for these programs, please visit www.asm.org/international/grants.  

ASM International Fellowships  

The International Fellowship Program encourages research and training collaborations in microbiological sciences worldwide by enabling early career scientists or students from developing countries to visit the host laboratories of experienced ASM members in the United States. Below are listed the International Fellows for Round Two, 2009.  

samirAhmed Samir Mohamed, Lecturer of Microbiology in the Faculty of Veternary Medicine at Cairo University, Egypt, was awarded an ASM International Fellowship for Africa to pursue the research project "Further studies on leptospirosis using molecular techniques" with host Clinton Murray at the Infectious Disease Service in the Brooke Army Medical Center in Fort Sam Houston, Tex.  


qiaoNan Qiao, Master's student in the Xiamen University School of Life Science in Xiamen, Fujian, China, was awarded an ASM International Fellowship for Asia to visit host Olga Tarasenko in the Biology Department of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to conduct a research project entitled "Glycoconjugates promote spore killing found in soil and on plants."  

fonsecaFernanda Fonseca, a Ph.D. student at the Microbiology Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was awarded an ASM International Fellowship for Latin America and the Caribbean to pursue the research project "The role of chitin and chitooligomers in the capsular architecture of Cryptococcus neoformans", with host Arturo Casadevall at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, N.Y.  

serraDiego Serra, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of La Plata, National Research Council (CONICET) in La Plata, Argentina, was awarded an ASM International Fellowship for Latin America and the Caribbean to work with host Rajendar Deora at the Wake Forest University Health Sciences in Winston-Salem, N.C., on the research project "Assessment of the role of bgp1 and bgp2, two loci of Bordetella encoding biosynthesis of a potential N-acetyl galactosaminuronic acid polysaccharide, in biofilm formation in vitro and in vivo."  

rinconSandra Rincon Nunez, a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine at the Universidad El Bosque in Bogota, Columbia, was awarded an ASM-PAHO Infectious Diseases Epidemiology and Surveillance Fellowship to pursue her research project, "Molecular epidemiology of a hyl(Efm) containing plasmid conferring increased virulence properties to hospital associated Enterococcus faecium from Latin America," with host Barbara Murray at the University of Texas Medical School, Houston, Tex.  

 

ASM International Professorships  

The International Professorship Program provides microbiological expertise to faculty and students throughout the world. The program enables an ASM member who is scientifically recognized in his/her area to travel to an institution of higher learning in a developing country to teach an interactive short course on a topic in any of the microbiological disciplines. Listed below are the International Professors for Round Two of 2009.  

regassa_copyLaura Regassa, Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Ga., was awarded an ASM Professorship for Africa to teach a course on molecular microbiology techniques at the Addis Ababa University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with host Solomon Gebreselassie.  

yuanLijuan Yuan, Assistant Professor of Virology and Immunology at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University College of Veterinary Medicine, was awarded an ASM International Professorship for Asia to teach a course on rotavirus and norovirus in pigs and humans with host Yangzhi Zeng at the Banna Mini-pig Inbred Lines Key Laboratory of Yunnan Province at Yunnan Agricultural University in Kunming, China.  

hume_copyMichael Hume, a Research Biologist in the Food and Feed Safety Research Unit of the USDA and Graduate Faculty member in the Poultry Science Department of Texas A&M University in College Station, was awarded an ASM International Professorship for Latin America and the Caribbean to teach a course on DGGE analysis of microbial ecology with host Fernando Rodriguez at the Colombian Corporation for Agricultural Research (CORPOICA) in Mosquera, Colombia.  

Indo-U.S. Professorships in Microbiology  

The Indo-U.S. Professorship Program encourages scientific partnerships between the United States and India and is sponsored by the Indo-U.S. Science&Technology Forum.  

goelRamesh Goel, Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, will teach a course on microbes and sustainability with host S. Krishnaswamy at the Madurai Kamraj University in Madurai, India.  

haggblomMax Haggblom, Professor and Chair in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., will travel to India to teach an international short course on bioremediation with host Srikanth Mutnuri at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Goa, India.  

Shiv Pillai, Associate Professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass., will visit host Gagandeep Kang at the Christian Medical College in Tamil Nadu, India, to teach a course on the cellular and molecular basis of protective immune responses.  

rajendranNarayanan Rajendran, Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, was awarded a professorship to teach a course on agricultural microbes bioinformatics (AMBI) with host Meenu Saraf at Gujarat University in Ahmedabad, India.