Lab Matters Spring 2018 | Page 38

fellows APHL Fellowship Programs Update by Heather Roney, MA, manager, Fellowship Programs February 28 marked the end of recruitment for the 2018 APHL-CDC Antimicrobial Resistance Fellowship. Applications were reviewed by representatives from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Antimicrobial Resistance Coordination and Strategy Unit, as well as representatives from state public health laboratories with extensive background in molecular and microbiology. Finalists are currently being interviewed by the Antibiotic Resistance Laboratory Network’s (ARLN) regional laboratories. Accepted fellows will be placed in the regional laboratories and are expected to start their fellowship this summer. APHL received a record number of applications for this year’s Bioinformatics Fellowship. Moreover, two-thirds of the host lab applications came from public health labs. Applications were reviewed by previous fellows and representatives from CDC and state public health l aboratories. Matching between fellows and host was completed in April; fellows are expected to begin their assignments in the summer. As states move further along in implementation and use of next generation sequencing, bioinformatics fellows are an invaluable resource for building capacity and infrastructure and PHLs are an excellent training environment, allowing a fellow exposure to a breadth of NGS applications in infectious disease. Infectious Diseases Fellow Thomas Moore gave a presentation at the January 2018 Tennessee Mosquito & Vector Control Association Annual Meeting based on his work at the Tennessee Department of Health: “Arbovirus Outbreak at the Nashville Zoo.” At the North Carolina State Laboratory of Public Health (NCSLPH), ID Lab Fellow Mia Warlick at the Florida Bureau of Public Health Laboratories-Tampa Infectious Diseases Fellow Michael Mash worked with post-doc fellow and Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory Fellowship alumnus Kara Levinson on validating MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry to identify enteric pathogens. Their work resulted in a reduction of turn-around- time for identification and typing of pathogens submitted to NCSLPH. n IP? This H S R E B M E APHL M R U O renew! Y u o W y E s N s E le R n u tters DID YOU E of Lab Ma T ISSU is your L AS today! p i h s r e b m e your m w e n e r d n a Take action ○ ○ phone: 1 By .485.2733 240 fax: 2 By 0.485.2700 24 ip : Membersh 36 ○ mail: 3 By L APH ership 0 c/o Memb , Suite 70 e u n e v A rgia 0 8515 Geo MD 2091 , g in r p S r Silve AT TN LAB MATTERS Summer 2017 PublicHealthLabs @APHL APHL.org