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Brown-MBL Graduate Program to Graduate First Student
April Shiflett will make history next month when she becomes the first graduate of the Brown-MBL Graduate Program in Biological and Environmental Sciences. April defended her thesis “Susceptibility and resistance to human TLF in African trypanosomes” last August and will participate in Brown’s commencement ceremony on May 27.
April’s studies the African trypanosome, the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness. The disease, which threatens sixty million people in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, was arrested for a time, but has recently reemerged in the face of political instability, population displacement, war, and poverty.
April is currently a post-doctoral associate in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia. Since defending her thesis, she has been busy interviewing for postdoctoral positions and submitting research manuscripts. She will be presenting her work next month at the University of Georgia’s Annual Symposium for the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Disease as well as at the Molecular Parasitology Meeting to be held at the MBL this September.
My graduate school experience was exceptional,” April says, “and I think that being at the MBL was why. It really is a cross-roads for parasitological research, and I got to meet and work with a much larger number of scientists in my discipline than I ever would have anywhere else.”
Congratulations, April!
