Valerie A. Paz-Soldan is a Peruvian-American social scientist based permanently in Peru as the Director of Tulane’s Health Office for Latin America (~19 years). She obtained her PhD in Maternal and Child Health (2003), with a minor in Population Studies, for which she took courses on demography, health econometrics, health policy, and qualitative research, and used mixed methods for her dissertation work on reproductive health in Malawi.

Dr.

Joshua Yukich is an epidemiologist and health economist. His research focuses on preventing and eliminating malaria and other vector borne disease with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. His main area of work involves the use and collection of surveillance data for malaria and the measuring of malaria transmission in intervention suppressed areas. Dr. Yukich was trained in epidemiology, public health, and health economics, and much of his work is centered around the synergy of these topics.

Mark Wiser's primary interest is the molecular and cellular biology of protozoan parasites and their interactions with the hosts. Major research accomplishments include the description of proteins synthesized by the malaria parasite and exported to the host cell; a proposed novel secretory pathway of the malarial parasite which functions to target proteins to the host erythrocyte, as well as a characterization of protein kinases and chaperones of the malarial parasite.

Dawn Wesson's background in medical/molecular entomology and vector biology has led to her role as a principal investigator on many research projects on vector-borne pathogens (particularly dengue, West Nile, and Chagas disease), and as an instructor of graduate and undergraduate courses on vector biology and ecology in the Department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.