We are accepting applications for summer 2024. Click here to apply
The Forum’s Regulatory Science Internship & Fellowship Program aims to ensure that the next generation of experts and leaders in medical product development and implementation can meet the public health needs of the nation and the world.
This program offers valuable opportunities for undergraduates, graduates, and post-graduate candidates interested in careers in public health and clinical science. Interns and fellows benefit from career development opportunities, exposing them to new regulatory science perspectives and techniques. Our program offers unparalleled learning and hands-on experience working together with global experts on projects that address emerging issues in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B (HBV), transplantation-associated virus infection (TAVI), metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MAFLD)/metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), pediatric cholestatic liver disease (PCLD), genetically-based rare diseases, and ocular diseases.
This training program provides interns and fellows with unique exposure to “regulatory science in the making” within specific disease areas, working closely with experts from public agencies, private industry, and academia in a collaborative environment where contributions matter. Interns and fellows will work on policy issues related to these diseases and the development of novel data science solutions. Because the Forum is a nexus for all the major stakeholders in critical public health issues, our interns and fellows gain an incomparable view of the entire field, providing valuable opportunities for professional development. Previous interns and fellows have contributed substantially and significantly to the Forum’s work, which included producing first-authored peer-reviewed manuscripts that laid the groundwork for regulatory development in the specific disease areas.
2023
Sarah Alhakimi, Graduate Student Researcher
Sarah is a Master’s of Public Health student in Infectious Disease & Vaccinology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She was born in Wisconsin, but raised overseas in Yemen. She graduated from Marquette University with a degree in Medical Laboratory Sciences and worked in a hospital lab performing a wide variety of tests in Chemistry, Hematology, Microbiology, Coagulation and Blood Bank. She also worked as a research assistant during undergrad, performing molecular diagnostic testing for parasitic infections on samples from Ghana. She is passionate about health equity and accessibility, infectious disease prevention strategies, global health and recently developed an interest in regulatory science. Her goal for the future is to be a voice for marginalized communities and she wants to be engaged with different minority communities to improve access to a long healthy life to promote the common good.
Nayri Alajaji, Graduate Student Researcher
Nayri is a Master’s of Public Health student in Infectious Disease & Vaccinology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She has a BS in Public Health from San Diego State University. During her undergraduate years she served as a student researcher and program planner at a public health non-profit, Public Good Projects, in which she worked on several projects focusing on mental health involving binge drinking and risky behavior, birth control and sex education, and flu vaccinations. She also worked as a student intern at a birth center where she evaluated health policies and population demographics in the San Diego area, with a special focus on military families. Her experiences have solidified her passion for the world of public health and the balance between infectious disease and health policy. She is a firm believer in collaboration and communication in public health and the necessity of bringing everyone to the table when it comes to discussing health issues.
Mayland Treat, Graduate Student Researcher
Mayland is a Master’s of Public Health student in Infectious Disease & Vaccinology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She has a BS in Global Disease Biology and a Minor in Public Health Sciences from UC Davis. While pursuing her degree, she spent time in two separate labs at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience, one studying Alzheimer’s and dementia, and the other focused on TBI and epilepsy. Her understanding and interest in public health issues and infectious diseases were further shaped when she participated in a Child and Family Health International global public health internship in the Philippines and a microbiology program in Thailand. She recently studied novel antimalarial drug compounds against ex vivo isolates in Uganda as a UC Berkeley Center for Global Public Health Summer Research Fellow. Her interests include One Health, zoonotic and emerging diseases, global public health, and sustainable health solutions
2022
Maggie Kuang, Graduate Student Researcher
Maggie is a MA/PhD student in Biostatistics at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She came originally from China and received her bachelor’s degree in Biometry & Statistics and Agricultural sciences from both Cornell University and Zhejiang University. Maggie is interested in solving statistical and computational issues arising in the analysis of public health data sets.
Tyler Mansfield, Graduate Student Researcher
Tyler Mansfield is a Master’s of Public Health student in Biostatistics at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics at Brigham Young University with a concentration in Biostatistics. Tyler is passionate about using data-driven methods to optimize human decision making: a passion that led him to research personalized medicine and high-dimensional computational biology. He has participated in internships automating case assignment in pathology laboratories with Epic Healthcare Systems and improving the reproducibility of experiments in drug discovery with Recursion Pharmaceuticals.
Mitchell Leus , UC Berkeley MPH ’22, Graduate Intern
Mitchell is completing his Master of Public Health (MPH) in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at UC Berkeley through his MPH Practicum with the HBV Forum and the HIV Forum. He also earned his BA in Public Health from UC Berkeley. His first introduction to public health was in high school working in HBV community health education for the Asian American community. As an undergraduate, he worked as a PrEP Navigator at a community health clinic in San Francisco and was involved in a needs-assessment project evaluating the barriers to implementing a clinical PrEP program in West Berkeley. In his MPH program, he completed his capstone project as a review of drug development for the newly US FDA approved LA-CAB as injectable PrEP. .
Aliya Mahmoud, Graduate Student Researcher
Aliya is a current Master’s of Public Health student in Infectious Disease & Vaccinology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health specializing in global health. She graduated in May 2021 from Macalester College with a BA in International Studies and Biology. During her time in undergrad she was a research assistant in a cellular and molecular biology lab studying ARVC; where she found great interest in conducting research. She also studied abroad in Jordan where she found her passion for refugee and humanitarian health. In her free- time she loves to watch and play soccer.
Edwin Chojolan, Graduate Student Researcher
Edwin is currently a Master’s of Public Health student in Epidemiology/ Biostatistics at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Prior to starting his graduate studies, he worked as a disease intervention specialist (DIS) in LA County. In his work, he interviewed and conducted field investigations to educate patients and prevent the transmission of STIs. During the summer of 2021, he worked for the Border Infectious Disease Surveillance program at the California Department of Public Health as a project assistant and worked with partners in Baja California to identify Covid-19 travelers across borders. Edwin is finalizing his work in a longitudinal study looking at the relationship between animal ownership (domesticated animals, livestock, etc.) and childhood diarrhea in Quito, Ecuador.
Adrian Cornejo, Graduate Student Researcher
Adrian is a Master’s of Public Health student in Infectious Disease & Vaccinology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Prior to beginning his public health journey, Adrian completed a B.S. in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics (MIMG) at UCLA in 2016. Upon graduation, he worked with the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study at UCLA under Roger Detels researching HIV/AIDS, T-cell subpopulations, and their biomarkers. At Berkeley, he has had the opportunity to work with staff and stakeholders at University Health Services on writing a grant for a novel text-based digital intervention targeting strep throat and identifying gaps in care. He has also worked with the California Department of Public Health and Berkeley researchers on a project assessing risk factors for COVID-19.
2021
Emily Gainor, UC Berkeley MPH ’21, Graduate Intern
Emily is a graduate student intern at the Forum for Collaborative Research. She is currently completing her Master of Public Health degree with an emphasis in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at UC Berkeley, and a Global Health certificate. She will graduate in August 2021. She completed her BA in Public Health with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice at UC Berkeley in 2020. As an undergraduate, Emily had the opportunity to run a public health physician shadowing internship program and related class, work with the Indian Health Service’s National HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C program, conduct background research for the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment, volunteer at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, and intern in a cancer laboratory. As a graduate student, she was involved with the open-access overlay journal Rapid Reviews: COVID-19, wrote a review on dengue in Africa, and is separately working on a publication surrounding New World hantaviruses and predictors of severe outcomes. Emily is applying to medical school and hopes to practice in both clinical medicine and public health throughout her career.
Kelsey MacCuish, UC Berkeley MPH ’22, Graduate Intern
Kelsey is a graduate student intern at the Forum for Collaborative Research. She is pursuing her Masters of Public Health with a concentration in epidemiology and biostatistics and an emphasis in applied data science. In 2020, Kelsey graduated with a B.A. in Public Health from UC Berkeley, where she worked with federally qualified health centers and health education programs to bridge health inequity gaps. Her undergraduate work generated her interest in using data to identify pressing health issues and as a basis for forming population-wide solutions. This last year, Kelsey has taught an introductory biostatistics course, an epidemiology course, and has researched the impact of hospital practices on breastfeeding outcomes with the Department of Nutritional Science and Toxicology.
Nick Murdock, UC Berkeley MPH ’21, Graduate Intern
Nick Murdock is a graduate student intern with The HIV Forum. He completed his Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health in 2021 and his B.A. in Public Health there in 2020. Nick is interested in a career in Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Modeling, and has previously studied the dynamics of antibiotic prescriptions in relation to influenza seasonality. In 2016-2017, he worked on the City of Kansas City, Missouri, Health Department statistics team.
2020
Joseph Lau, UC Berkeley MPH ’21, Graduate Intern
Joseph is a graduate student intern at the Forum for Collaborative Research. He is currently pursuing his Masters of Public Health with an emphasis in infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley. He completed his BS in Biology with a concentration in microbiology from San Francisco State University in 2017. He had the opportunity to join a plant bacterial genetics lab studying Sinorhizobium meliloti, a gram-negative leguminous plant symbiont. After graduating from San Francisco State University in January 2017, he worked at Vitalant Research Institute, under Dr. Mars Stone, director of the Viral Reference Lab and Repository Core. He was a lab manager/study coordinator for the Reservoir Assay Validation and Evaluation Network study, a study where leukapheresis-derived PBMCs and plasma panels are distributed to labs that are developing or performing HIV reservoir assays to evaluate and compare performance characteristics that could be used in clinical research studies.
Daniel Mota, UC Berkeley MPH '21, Graduate Intern
Daniel is a graduate student intern at the Forum for Collaborative Research. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Public Health with an emphasis in infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley. He completed his BS in Molecular and Cell Biology at San Francisco State University in 2017.During his time at SF State Daniel joined the lab of Dr. Philip J. Rosenthal at University of California, San Francisco where he studied the impact of different malaria chemoprevention regimens for pregnant Ugandan women on plasmodium falciparum drug resistance mediating polymorphisms. Directly after graduation, he spent the summer working with UCSF and the Infectious Disease Research Collaboration (IDRC) on a different project studying P.falciparum sensitivity by culturing parasite-postive patient samples with investigational compounds in Tororo, Uganda. After his time in Uganda he served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) to Sabah, Malaysia, mentoring and serving as an American ambassador to a small public secondary school in Keningau, Sabah. While there he was able to implement programs that focused on women's empowerment by securing a grant from the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur to start the first girls' soccer league in public schools. While at UC Berkeley he teaches introductory Biology lab and mentors undergraduate students. Daniel plans on applying to medical school after graduation with the hopes of returning home and serving his community.
Tinkhani Mbichila, MD, UC Berkeley MPH ’20, Graduate Intern
Tinkhani is a graduate student intern under the HIV Forum at the Forum for Collaborative Research. He is currently pursuing an MPH degree in Epidemiology at UC Berkeley. Tinkhani is a medical doctor and public health researcher with experience in conducting clinical trials in infectious diseases. After graduating from the University of Malawi with a Doctor of Medicine degree, he worked with the Ministry of Health, providing clinical care in infectious diseases. In 2016, he joined the University of North Carolina research project leading PrEP safety and efficacy clinical trials as a co-investigator under the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN). These trials tested novel PrEP agents of infusible, broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (VRC01), and injectable integrase inhibitor (cabotegravir) against HIV-1 acquisition in sub-Saharan African women. Tinkhani plans to use the experience at the Forum to launch a career that will help him contribute towards improving global health through research and application of evidence in global policy and practice.
Eunice Ndzerem-Shang, PharmD, UC Berkeley MPH ’21, Graduate Intern
Eunice is a graduate student intern at the Forum for Collaborative Research. She is currently a Master of Public Health student at UC Berkeley, School of Public Health with an emphasis in epidemiology and biostatistics. Eunice holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Kansas University and a doctorate degree in pharmacy from Howard University. After graduating from Howard University, Eunice completed a Managed Care/Retail Pharmacy residency program at Ramsell Corporation, acquiring valuable knowledge and skills in Managed Care Pharmacy and Infectious diseases with a focus on HIV/AIDS and opportunistic infections. Being a clinical pharmacist for many years, Eunice has worked in various private and public health affiliations such as State AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, County Behavioral Health Programs, and State Pharmaceutical Assistance Programs. Eunice is looking forward to advancing her practical knowledge and expertise through this internship, with a particular interest in how the drug development process works and impacts drug manufacturing, regional and global drug delivery, and access.
Frederique Sauve, UC Berkeley MPH '21, Graduate Intern
Frederique is a graduate student intern at the Forum for Collaborative Research. She is currently pursuing her Masters of Public Health with an emphasis in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at UC Berkeley. She completed her B.Sc in Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University in 2018 where she had the opportunity to join a neuropharmacology lab and studied modulation of AMPA receptors in the brain. After graduating, she worked for the University of Montreal School of Public Health under the supervision of Mira Johri where she studied interventions to increase access to childhood vaccination in rural India. At UC Berkeley, she teaches two large introductory neuroscience courses, "Drugs and the Brain" and "Brain, Mind and Behavior", as a graduate student instructor. Frederique hopes to pursue a career in teaching at the university level and in research, contributing to improving access to infectious disease treatment in underserved countries.
Bonnie Xu, UC Berkeley MPH '21, Graduate Intern
Bonnie is a graduate student intern at the Forum for Collaborative Research. She is currently pursuing a Master of Public Health degree at UC Berkeley with an emphasis in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology. Bonnie received her B.S. in Global Disease Biology from UC Davis in 2018 where she became interested in public health and infectious diseases after completing several internships related to HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B.
Kidist Belay Zewdie, Gilead Fellow in HIV (2019-2020)
Kidist is currently pursuing a PhD in Epidemiology/Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. She obtained a Master’s of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Washington University, St. Louis, Brown School of Social Work and Public Health and a BA in Biology with a minor in Chemistry from the Macalester College, St. Paul, MN. Kidist's training involves mentorship by the Forum's executive director Dr. Veronica Miller, and the co-chairs of the Statistical Analysis Working Group of the Forum's project on HIV prevention trial designs: Dr. Deborah Donnell, University of Washington/Seattle and Dr. David Glidden, University of San Francisco. Kidist's work and training at The Forum started in 2019 in the context of a three-way collaboration established with the principals at Public Health England in London England, the University of Washington Department of Epidemiology/Global Health, and the Forum for Collaborative Research with the goal to explore the Public Health England database and conduct analyses to substantiate the correlation between HIV and rectal gonorrhea risk in men-who-have-sex with men across England. This work is forming the basis of the Forum's approach to establishing the HIV Incidence Index, crucial for the design and execution of HIV prevention trials testing new interventions. Additionally, Kidist is working with Dr. Jared Baeten from University of Washington to examine the relationship between sexually transmitted diseases and HIV incidence in the ECHO trial, at baseline and throughout the trial follow-up. The ECHO trial provides significant information about HIV incidence in the communities were PREP studies in women will be conducted. These two projects (PHE and ECHO) will form the basis for publications that she will author and present at HIV Forum and public meetings and conferences.
Past Program Participants:
2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2019
What Does a Forum Internship Offer?
Hands-On Experience
Interns focus on projects that align with their backgrounds and areas of interest, and address cutting-edge public health issues. These projects provide the opportunity to delve deeply into science and policy while working with leaders in the field.
A Broader Knowledge Base
Forum interns are exposed to a myriad of opportunities in the science policy arena. Interns are immersed in the conversations and efforts that are moving the field forward. There are few places that offer the same breadth and depth of learning opportunities as the Forum.
A Unique View of the Field
Through the Forum, researchers, advocates, regulatory agencies, health care providers, private foundations, pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies have an independent and unbiased venue in which to address emerging issues and advance cutting edge research. By planning and participating in these meetings, interns gain a view of the field as a whole, and learn from the Forum's unique approach to propelling breakthroughs in HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis prevention, treatment, and access to care.
Professional Development
The Forum has strong working relationships with leading stakeholders across the spectrum of science and policy. Our interns often interact with many of these leaders in the field directly, which allows them to develop their own relationships.
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Gilead Sciences and ViiV Healthcare have provided educational grants for this program.
