FELLOWS
APHL Fellows Thrive in Host Labs and Beyond
by Heather Roney, MA, manager, Fellowship Programs
From Fellows to Full-time
Dr. Alesha Stewart was hired as a full-
time Chemist III at the Texas Department
of State Health Services Laboratory, and
another former AR Laboratory fellow, Dr.
Lisa Leung, has accepted a position with
the US Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) as a reviewer for microdiagnostic
devices. APHL also congratulates former
EID Laboratory Fellow Kara Levinson
who was hired as Deputy Director of the
Tennessee Public Health Laboratory.
A Welcome to New Fellows
APHL welcomes new Infectious Diseases
Laboratory Fellow Valerie Patritti who
began her fellowship at the New York
City Department of Health Public Health
Laboratory in January. She replaces
former fellow Moinuddin Chowdhury
who accepted a permanent position as a
research scientist at the laboratory.
APHL welcomed two Newborn Screening,
Bioinformatics and Data Analytics fellows
in January:
• Jessica Choi Respress, MS, a recent
graduate of Georgia State University,
will be working with the Wadsworth
Center’s Bioinformatics Core and
Applied Genomics Technologies
Cluster to set up and validate variant
calling pipelines for custom multi-
gene panels relevant to severe
combined immunodeficiency (SCID),
Krabbe disease, Pompe disease,
X-linked Adrenoleukodystrophy
(X-ALD), mucopolysaccharidosis
type 1 (MPS 1), and guanidinoacetate
methyltransferase deficiency (GAMT).
AMD Academy intermediate bioinformatics training for microbiologists had a strong fellow presence. NBS Bioinformatics Fellow
Samantha Marcellus and AR Fellow Lindsay Parnell attended as students and Bioinformatics Fellows alumni Sean Wang and Kevin
Libuit and former AR Fellow Kelsey Florek served as faculty
• Bryce Asay, PhD, a recent graduate
from Colorado State University, will be
developing a universal next-generation
sequencing analysis pipeline that
can address second tier testing
requirements for clinical disorders in
newborns. This will include expansion
on current diagnosis methodology to
all clinical newborn disorders reported
in the literature, variant curation,
variant database development, and the
creation of an automated pipeline to
update the developed database with
novel newborn screening findings for
variants of interest.
The two join Samantha Marcellus, MPH,
and Charles Roberts, MS, who began
their fellowships in July and September
respectively.
Fellow Applications in Review
APHL is now recruiting PhD-level bench
scientists for the Ronald Laessig Memorial
Newborn Screening Fellowship, hosted
at the Maryland Department of Health
in Baltimore, MD, and the Division of
Consolidated Laboratory services in
Richmond, VA. The association also
is reviewing applications for the 2020
cohort of Antimicrobial Resistance (AR)
Laboratory fellows and potential host
laboratories, as well as applications for
the 2020 class of Bioinformatics fellows.
Review is expected to be completed
by late spring with launch of the new
programs in summer 2020. n
Meanwhile, Bioinformatics fellows are
deep into their fellowship, and engaged
in issues from vector borne diseases to
influenza. Fellow alumni continue to
support development of a bioinformatics
workforce at public health laboratories.
32
LAB MATTERS Winter 2020
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