AUGUST 15, 2022
THE LATEST


75th Indian Independence Day
Friday, August 15, 2022
To address the global burden of tuberculosis (TB), one of humankind’s oldest scourges, an international collaboration led by Johns Hopkins Medicine has today been awarded up to $200 million in research funding over five years by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Supporting, Mobilizing and Accelerating Research for Tuberculosis Elimination (SMART4TB) project.

“This extraordinary investment from USAID will enable us to have a transformational impact on global efforts to end TB and will provide unparalleled research, strategic development and policy support opportunities for Johns Hopkins Medicine and our collaborators around the world over the next five years,” says SMART4TB consortium chief of party Richard Chaisson, M.D., director of the Center for Tuberculosis Research and professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Additionally, we’ll be able to strengthen and empower the people, organizations and communities directly fighting TB in the areas most affected by the disease.”

“India has the highest burden of TB globally. This award provides an opportunity to build local research capacity to answer locally relevant research questions while simultaneously convening stakeholders to ensure research findings are translated to policy," said consortium member Sunil Solomon, YRG Chair.

GKII Inaugural Annual Conference
Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022
8 a.m.-12 p.m. EST/5:30-9:30 p.m. IST
GKII is excited to announce its inaugural annual conference, themed around climate change. We're putting together exciting panels featuring experts from India and Hopkins. Be sure to save the date for Wednesday, September 28th and pre-register below!

Stay tuned for exciting information on panelists and sessions, keynote speakers, and more! 
Gupta-Klinsky India Institute Executive Director
Interested in working with GKII? We are reviewing candidates for a newly-created Executive Director position to create a supportive, open, participatory, and results-oriented working environment. This position will support the network of GKII faculty, staff, students, and alumni, as well as collaborating partners and supporters, to ultimately deliver on the mission and strategic goals of GKII.
 
The Executive Director will be responsible for support and delivery of all GKII activities, including stakeholder engagement, strategic development and implementation, financial performance and sustainability.
NEWS OF NOTE
Thursday, August 10, 2022
JHU Hub

Johns Hopkins University experts in health care, epidemiology, and harm reduction convened Wednesday to share their insights on the global monkeypox outbreak, which has infected 31,000 people in 90 countries around the world, including more than 9,000 cases confirmed in the U.S. The experts discussed monkeypox symptoms, transmission, treatment, and the availability of vaccines.

Wednesday, August 9, 2022
Bloomberg School of Public Health

Ligia Paina, PhD ’14, MHS ‘08, an assistant professor in the Department of International Health’s Health Systems Program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and her co-PI Meng Zhu, PhD, MS, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, were awarded an Impact Grant from the Johns Hopkins Alliance for a Healthier World for their work aimed at narrowing the health equity gap in urban slums in Chandigarh, India. 

SPOTLIGHT
Anita Shet, MD
Director of MCHI
Senior Scientist

Anita Shet is a pediatric infectious diseases specialist with broad interests in childhood infections in low and middle-income countries with a specific focus on vaccine-preventable infections. She is also the Director of the Maternal and Child Health Center India (MCHI).

MCHI works to strengthen public health education, accelerate research in maternal and child health, and support implementation of public health interventions that will reduce disparities and improve the lives of mothers and children in India, and bring us closer towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The center focuses on women’s health, saving newborn lives, ensuring quality care, addressing vaccine-preventable diseases, meeting the needs of children who live in urban and rural areas who are marginalized and hard to reach, and strengthening public health capacity in India.

Her interests include clinical epidemiology and immunology of dengue infections in infants and children. She leads a multicenter study on surveillance of invasive pneumococcal infections and clinical pneumonia in children, and is evaluating the impact of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine rollout in India. Her research also explores the link between timely immunization and cognitive outcomes in children. She has experience in the care of children living with HIV, and her previous research has explored drug adherence and treatment outcomes in HIV using complex interventions designed to modify behavior. Her interests include studying the interactions of nutrition and infection, and her previous studies explored the effect of iron supplementation in HIV-infected children with anemia and inflammation.

She currently serves on the Council of the International Congress of Infectious Diseases, and is member of the Dengue Vaccines Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Workgroup. She also serves on the NIH Candidate Vaccine Advisory Committee and the Steering Group on Epidemiological Preparation for Vaccine Trials established by the Indo-US Vaccine Action Program to provide guidance on epidemiological and vaccine studies for dengue and chikungunya control in India.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Thursday, August 18, 2022
10 a.m. EST/7:30 p.m. IST

Don't forget to register for GKII's August seminar! Sam Asher, Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Imperial College London (formerly JHU SAIS), will speak on the topic: Development in High Resolution: Big, Open Data for Research and Policy in India.
Sunday, August 21, 2022
12 a.m.-11:30 p.m. EST

Do you want to make a difference in this world? Please join us at Footprints 2022, a virtual running event inspired by Rishi Shet, a teenager who showed how running, giving and helping others can be transformative.

Through this event, you will complete a 5 or 10K run at your pace and place, but virtually ‘alongside’ youth organizers of Footprints 2022 in Bangalore, India on August 21st. Your run will help support programs that help transform disadvantaged children in India into advocates of change who lead healthy and productive lives and become role models themselves.

Let us run together to carry on Rishi’s passions of running, helping others, and transforming the world.
Wednesday, Sept. 14 2022
1-2:30 p.m. EST/10:30 p.m.-12 a.m. IST

The Center for Infectious Diseases in India (CIDI) is launching their center in Baltimore, MD. This event will focus on their Indo-Johns Hopkins collaborations for infectious diseases research, training, education and programmatic activities, and the resources available to young and experienced investigators who are looking to expand their careers to conduct infectious disease research in India. They invite you to attend virtually on Wednesday, September 14, 2022. This event will be followed by a launch of the program in India in Spring 2023.

TOPICS

Johns Hopkins and India: A Long-Standing Relationship
Dr. Amita Gupta, Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases

Dr. Sunil Suhas Solomon, Co-Director, CIDI
 
Johns Hopkins Center for Infectious Diseases in Pune
Dr. Vidya Mave, Co-Director, CIDI
 
Reflections: What Does It Take to Build a Successful Career in India?
Dr. Robert C. Bollinger
Dr. Nikhil Gupte
Dr. Gregory M. Lucas
Dr. Nishi Suryavanshi 
 
Closing Remarks
Raj & Kamla Gupta
Steven Klinsky & Maureen Sherry
Dr. Sunil Kumar, Provost, Johns Hopkins University
 
Please RSVP by August 31
MEDIA COVERAGE
TIME, Aug. 1, 2022

The lack of a coordinated global response to the coronavirus pandemic revealed the necessity of microbial surveillance to help predict coming disease outbreaks, or at least speed the rate of detection once the virus begins to spread.

In 2021, Abbott, the healthcare company known primarily for its diagnostic test, formed the Abbott pandemic defense coalition (APCD) to detect new pathogens, shares discoveries, and contain virus outbreaks before they have a chance to reach pandemic proportions.

In a recent Time article, Dr. Sunil Solomon, associate professor of medicine and director of YRG care in Chennai, India, one of APDC’s partners, talked about the benefits of the coalition’s collaborative approach to preventing the next pandemic.
The Hindustan Times, Aug. 3, 2022

“Persons with immunocompromising conditions such as cancer (such as lymphoma) or uncontrolled and advanced HIV with low T-cell counts appear to have a higher risk of death. Young children, children with eczema and other skin conditions, and children with immunocompromising conditions may also be at increased risk of severe disease,” said Dr. Amita Gupta, chief, Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the US. “We do not yet know how much protection people have who have been previously vaccinated with smallpox, but we do know that there are people younger than 40-50 years (depending on the country) who may be more susceptible due to cessation of smallpox vaccination campaigns globally after eradication of the disease,” she added.
The Hindustan Times, July 26, 2022

Dr. Amita Gupta spoke to the Hindustan Times about the monkeypox outbreak. “Currently mass vaccination is not required. Instead, priority is recommended for contacts of cases — should be offered post-exposure prophylaxis ideally with vaccination occurring within four days of first exposure to prevent onset of disease, and pre-exposure prophylaxis for health care workers, who are at risk, laboratory personnel working with orthopoxviruses such as monkeypox, clinical lab staff performing testing of monkeypox, and high-risk populations,” Dr Gupta said.
OPPORTUNITIES
BIRAC Call for Proposal
Application Deadline: Aug. 29, 2022
The Indo-US Clinical Research Ethics Fellowship Program has been jointly conceptualized by Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Biotechnology, GoI Under the aegis of Indo –US Vaccine Action Programme (VAP).

The objective of the program is to provide funding support to selected individuals with strong scientific background with interest in the field of Clinical research. The present RFP for fellowship aims towards building a critical mass of trained scholars who will contribute actively to the clinical research ethics in India and establishment of centers of excellence.
The program will support research projects in the field of clinical research ethics including, but not limited to, ethical aspects of:

  • Ethical aspects of vaccine research and clinical trial
  • Research subject recruitment in clinical research
  • Informed consent taken during the clinical research
  • Research with stored biological specimens
  • Return of unanticipated research results
  • Research on novel technologies such as stem cells, CAR-T treatment, and gene therapy
  • Controlled human infection models
  • Research with vulnerable populations such as prisoners, children, or the socioeconomically
TRAC Scholar Grants for Faculty Development
The Johns Hopkins Tuberculosis Research Advancement Center (TRAC) is providing pilot grants to faculty in the Schools of Public Health, Medicine, and Nursing to enable and support TB related research projects. Junior faculty in other JHU schools are eligible to apply if the proposal meets all other criteria.

The primary purpose of these awards is to strengthen the individual’s ability to secure independent NIH research funding with foci on R- and K-series awards.

The budget for the faculty grants is a maximum of $50,000 in direct costs. The TRAC will calculate and add indirect costs at the time of funding. They plan to award three to five (3-5) 1-year grants with a start date of January 1st, 2023.

Deadlines:
  • Letter of Intent due date: Monday, August 29th by 8:00 AM ET 
  • Applicant feedback on LOI by: September 12th
  • Application due date: Monday, October 24th by 8:00 AM ET
  • Award Announcement by: December 12th
CROI Abstract Submissions
The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) has posted its deadlines for general and late-breaking abstract submissions. ACTG abstracts must be submitted to the ACTG Publications Office for review and approval before the CROI deadline.
 
General Abstract Submission: The submission deadline for abstracts on HIV and hepatitis viruses and their related conditions is September 15th, 2022. Submission is set to open in late August. Please submit all abstracts for ACTG Review to [email protected] by September 8th.
 
Late-Breaking Submission: The submission deadline for late-breaking abstracts on HIV and hepatitis viruses, plus all COVID science and monkeypox science, is January 5th, 2023. Please submit all abstracts for ACTG Review to [email protected] by December 29th.
 
Please contact the ACTG Publications Office with any questions:  [email protected].
AIIS 2022 Fellowship Competition
Application Deadline: Nov. 15, 2022
The American Institute of Indian Studies announced its 2022 fellowship competition, and invites applications from scholars who wish to conduct their research in India. Junior fellowships are awarded to Ph.D. candidates to conduct research for their dissertations in India for up to eleven months. Senior fellowships are awarded to scholars who hold the Ph.D. degree for up to nine months of research in India.

AIIS welcomes applicants from a wide variety of disciplines. It especially encourages applicants in fields such as Development Studies, Natural Resources Management, Public Health, and Regional Planning.

Inquiries should be directed to 773-702-8638 or [email protected].
Looking for Student Support?
Johns Hopkins faculty who are seeking student support for India-related projects can now submit position descriptions. We will post them online and share in our email updates!