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Bixby Fellowships Initiated
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Senior associate Mark Montgomery advises Subramaniam
Chandrasekhar at Council headquarters. |
Postgraduate fellowships fulfill an essential part of the Population
Council’s mission—training professionals to address population, health,
and development issues and expand research capacity in developing
countries. During the past five decades, the Council’s fellowship
programs have provided training for more than 2,500 biomedical, public
health, and social science researchers, many of whom have progressed to
hold leadership positions in the global health field. Funding for
Council fellows is provided by such private foundations as The Fred H.
Bixby, the F.M. Kirby, and The Wallace foundations; the United States
government; individual donors; and the Council itself, through its
unrestricted funds.
A new Fred H. Bixby Fellowship Program was recently launched with the
naming of four outstanding fellows and their Population Council staff
mentors. The Bixby fellowships offer opportunities for researchers from
developing countries to work with experienced mentors in the Council’s
laboratories and network of offices. Chosen from a field of a dozen
exceptional finalists, members of the first class of Bixby fellows come
to the Council from China, Egypt, India, and Kenya.
Yunhui Zhang, who received her doctoral degree in 2004, is
currently associate professor at the School of Public Health at Fudan
University in Shanghai. Yunhui’s focus is on environmental health
science, and as a fellow she will be studying the damaging reproductive
effects of DEHP, a chemical commonly found in cosmetics and used in
flexible plastics. Her research will be undertaken in the laboratories
of the Council’s Center for Biomedical Research in New York, under the
auspices of the Reproductive Health program.
Asmaa Elbadawy will complete her doctorate in economics at
McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, this year. Her research
interests lie in the economics of education, gender, marriage, and the
family, with a focus on the Middle East region. She will work in the
Council’s Cairo office under the Poverty, Gender, and Youth program and
will be mentored by Ragui Assaad, regional director, West Asia and North
Africa.
Subramaniam Chandrasekhar completed his doctorate in
economics at Pennsylvania State University in 2004. He is now assistant
professor of economics at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development
Research in Mumbai, India. His fellowship will focus on the
multidimensional aspects of urban poverty, with a focus on Indian slums
and the living conditions of adolescents. Chandra will work at the New
York headquarters of the Population Council as part of the Poverty,
Gender, and Youth program, under the guidance of Mark Montgomery, senior
associate.
Francis Onyango finished his doctorate in demography at the
University of Pennsylvania in the summer of 2007 and recently returned
to Nairobi to begin his fellowship. Francis previously worked as a
research trainee at the African Population and Health Research Center in
Nairobi, where he studied adolescent sexual and reproductive health
behavior and the role of voluntary HIV and AIDS counseling and testing.
He will be working at the Council’s Nairobi office where, as part of the
Reproductive Health program, he will study family planning and emergency
contraception. Jill Keesbury and Harriet Birungi, program associates,
will be his mentors.
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