Q&A with Dr. Thumbi Ndung’u

Though he is now an Associate Professor in HIV/AIDS Research at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine, as well as the Scientific Director of the HIV Pathogenesis Programme at the Doris Duke Medical Research Institute at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa, not so long ago Thumbi Ndung’u was a graduate student working with Max Essex at the Harvard AIDS Initiative. He earned his PhD from Harvard in…

A Day in the Life of a Graduate Student

By Martha Henry The development of expertise requires sustained periods of practice. 10,000 hours is often cited as the amount of time necessary to achieve expert status. By that standard, Kim Armstrong, a graduate student in the lab of Max Essex at the Harvard AIDS Initiative, recently became an expert in HIV research. By her estimate, she has spent approximately 10,500 hours at her lab bench studying how drug resistance…

New Findings on Drug Resistance

The “Big Three” diseases of Africa are HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB. To date, we haven’t developed a successful vaccine for any of them, which means that drugs are of enormous importance in controlling the epidemics. For malaria and TB, the spread of drug resistant strains has wreaked public health havoc, restricting our ability to control and eliminate the diseases.