Mainza Durrell

Mainza Durrell

Email Mainza Durrell

Currently teaching:
Global Health Leadership

Dr. Durrell is an applied implementation research scientist with a background in Global Health and Healthcare Management. Her research has focused on developing, implementing and evaluating HIV prevention interventions in minority and underserved communities in the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Durrell has more than 12 years of experience successfully managing research projects, leading cross-functional teams and collaborating with stakeholders at different levels. She successfully launched and led the implementation of performance monitoring systems, evaluation and research for Jhpiego’s Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) for HIV prevention program in 11 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Durrell currently serves as the Director of Research at the Chicago Center for HIV Elimination at the University of Chicago where she leads cross functional teams conducting research to understand barriers to HIV prevention and implement community-based research to help dismantle health inequities for young black men who have sex with men, transgender women, and criminal justice involved populations.


Dr. Hawkins is an Associate Professor in Medicine - Infectious Disease, Director of the HIV/Viral Hepatitis Co-infection Program and faculty member in the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University. Dr. Hawkins has over ten years of experience in global health working with large HIV care and treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, she served as Clinical Director to the Management and Development HIV Care and Treatment program in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, providing technical assistance and overseeing the large-scale rollout of antiretroviral therapy to over 50,000 HIV-infected individuals. Her research interests include HIV and chronic viral hepatitis. She currently leads studies of HIV, HIV/hepatitis B virus, and HIV/hepatitis C virus co-infection and Hepatocellular Carcinoma in the United States, Tanzania, and Nigeria. She is a member of AIDS Clinical Trial Group Hepatitis Transformative Science Group and HBV Cure Working Group and the MACs Liver Working Group. She regularly mentors medical students, residents, and Infectious Disease fellows at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in global health projects.


Kate Klein serves as the administrative director at the Havey Institute for Global Health. She is responsible for the effective operations of the institute's research and administrative activities as well as the development, oversight and management of international education in clinical medicine and research opportunities for Feinberg School of Medicine students. Klein oversees the integration of all international educational programs for Feinberg and is responsible for developing and maintaining the school’s global educational partnerships. Prior to joining the institute, Klein worked on the Zika virus response at the American Academy of Pediatrics. She also worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Vietnam country office and at headquarters in Atlanta on the Global Health Security Agenda. She also served as the associate director for the Program of African Studies at Northwestern. Klein holds a master's of public health from Northwestern University and a master's degree in anthropology from American University.


Martin Nieuwoudt is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at Stellenbosch University. He is the director for the Institute for Biomedical Engineering at SU and also holds an adjunct professor position in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University. He has degrees in physiology, nuclear medicine technology and a PhD in bioengineering. He has worked as a researcher in tissue engineering, molecular biology, epidemiology and biostatistics. Much of Nieuwoudt's research focuses on the immune system in states of health and disease; in particular, merging mathematical models with empirical biomarker data to improve statistical methodologies and to inform public-health decision-making regarding anti-retroviral treatment outcomes. He is also involved in the commercialisation of intellectual property, educational entrepreneurship and strategic management at SU.


Kara Palamountain is a Research Associate Professor at the Kellogg School of Management (KSM). Her primary area of interest is the development and adoption of medical technologies in Africa. She has managed over 50 KSM research teams conducting market entry analysis in over a dozen countries (Botswana, Brazil, Cambodia, China, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Zambia).

She has collaborated with a number of organizations, including commercial diagnostic companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institute for Health, USAID’s Center for Accelerating Impact and Innovation, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Makerere University (Uganda), Mbarara University of Science and Technology (Uganda), University of Ibadan (Nigeria), University of Lagos (Nigeria), FIND, and Rice University (US). She has authored numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals, including PLOS One, Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Diagnostics. Kara is also the President of the Northwestern Global Health Foundation. Prior to her work at the Northwestern Global Health Foundation and at Kellogg, Kara worked as a management consultant in Deloitte's Healthcare practice for over six years.


Sarah Rodriguez

Sarah Rodriguez

Email Sarah Rodriguez

Currently teaching:
Global Bioethics

Sarah B. Rodriguez is lecturer in the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program in the Feinberg School of Medicine and a lecturer in the Global Health Studies Program in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She has taught in both programs, offering courses in global bioethics, international perspectives in reproductive and sexual health, and in gender and global health, for the Global Health Studies Program, and seminars on the history of medicine, the history of women in medicine, and the history of epidemics for the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program. Rodriguez came to Northwestern as a post-doctoral fellow, first in the Oncofertility Consortium, Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Division of Fertility Preservation, and the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society, Feinberg School of Medicine, and then in the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program. Her research area is in women’s reproductive and sexual health. She is the author of more than half a dozen single-authored articles and book chapters and more than a dozen co-authored articles and book chapters. Her first book, Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment, was published in 2014. Rodriguez holds a Ph.D. in preventive and societal medicine from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and an MA in the history of science and medicine from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.


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