Christina Faust – Working to Eradicate Malaria

By Conor Ryan

As part of her PhD work at Princeton's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Christina is focusing on infectious diseases. One of her projects involves working with district hospitals in Senegal to study how healthcare policy translates into practice on the ground with regard to the treatment of diseases such as malaria. She is also examining thirty years of malaria data from Vietnam in order to develop treatment strategies for pockets of the disease found in forested areas.

Christina is 2010 Mitchell Scholar. She studied Immunology and Global Health at National University of Ireland Maynooth, where the curriculum focused on neglected tropical diseases and diseases prevalent in poorer countries. Her thesis examined the published evidence of human infection by newly emerging strains of malaria originating in macaque monkeys in South East Asia. Studying bioinformatics and epidemiology in Ireland helped to prepare Christina for the data analysis and modeling work which informs so much of her research today.

Rather than treating individual patients, Christina hopes her work will inform the development of healthcare policy impacting entire populations in economically challenged regions of the world. She intends to do her post doctoral research with the Ecology of Infectious Disease Research Program in the UK and will continue to work towards the long term goal of eradicating malaria.