Baltimore Institute Hosts Students from Ron Brown Scholar Program

June 16, 2006

(BALTIMORE, MD) - The Institute of Human Virology (IHV) is hosting four students this summer as part of an ongoing partnership with the Ron Brown Scholar Program. Naomi Andebrhan, Geraldine Pierre, Jeanine Pollard and Mike Woodward will gain valuable research experience working in IHV’s laboratories and clinics in Baltimore and Nigeria. The Ron Brown Scholar Program is a national program that awards scholarships to academically talented, highly motivated African-American high school seniors.

Naomi Andebrhan, a high school graduate from Lakewood, Calif., spent the first half of her life in Eritrea and Saudi Arabia. From June 26, 2006 through August 4, 2006 she will be working in assistant professor William Reid’s lab at IHV, which focuses on the characterization of HIV and the Human Herpes Virus 8. At Stanford University Naomi hopes to major in International Relations with a focus on public health of human biology.

Geraldine Pierre will be working at IHV Nigeria from June 7, 2006 through August 6, 2006 under IHV’s Fogarty AIDS International Training Research Program (AITRP). While at Miami Central High School, she founded the Rocket AIDS Awareness Program (RAP), which has grown from a small group intended to spread the message about HIV/AIDS around the campus, to one of the most significant driving forces of HIV education in the country. Geraldine currently attends the University of Virginia.

Jeanine Pollard grew up in Baltimore City and was inspired by a school-wide assembly on housing problems during her sophomore year at Notre Dame Prep. She was one of seven African-Americans in her graduating class of 133 and currently attends Brown University where she plans to study neuroscience. Jeanine will be working at IHV from May 30, 2006 through August 11, 2006.

Mike Woodward will be working at IHV from July 5, 2006 through September 9, 2006. Woodard, a graduate of Cortland High School in Fredericksburg, Va. and student at Stanford University, aspires to become a neurosurgeon. Mike will be working at IHV from July 5, 2006 through September 9, 2006.

Jeanine and Mike will both be working directly under Dr. Fabio Romerio investigating HIV/AIDS in IHV’s molecular immunobiology lab.

The Ron Brown Scholar Program is a national program that awards scholarships to academically talented, highly motivated African-American high school seniors who intend to pursue undergraduate degrees full-time. Established in 1996, the Program honors the late Ronald H. Brown, secretary of commerce during the Clinton administration.

IHV is founded and directed by Dr. Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of HIV as the cause of AIDS and is a center of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) and affiliated with the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Related Information:

• Ron Brown Scholar Program (Official Web site)
• IHV’s Fogarty AIDS International Training Research Program (AITRP)