 Nick Hu is currently in his fourth year at UC Berkeley studying community dynamics and merging technologies to improve health access issue, analyzing it from a multidimensional perspective from international policy down to the psychology of illness. At Berkeley, he is currently the president of The Berkeley Project and teaches reproductive health at local high schools with Peer Health Exchange. Nick is also a trained EMT-B and has worked with several ambulance companies and hospitals servicing low-income populations and is working with BearEMS to start up an on-campus response team. In the summer of 2010, as a Blum Center Fellow and with support from AISCS, he implemented the first emergency medical response system in Shirati, Tanzania, working with local doctors and volunteers to create a safety net for emergencies. In implementing his project, he conducted several community dynamic studies that will be useful in future projects as well as picking up basic Swahili, which he is also currently studying. He plans to continue a career in public health
and medicine and eventually opening up independently sustainable, community operated clinics in rural Sub-Saharan Africa.  Alejandro LaRiviere, Molecular and Cell Biology; Global Poverty and Practice Minor Alejandro LaRiviere graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2012 with a degree in Molecular and Cell Biology. In addition, he chose to participate in the Global Poverty and Practice minor through UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies in order to expand his knowledge and understanding about the wider implications of global volunteerism and how to more effectively implement development projects. At Berkeley, Alejandro served as the Volunteer Director for The Berkeley Project, UC Berkeley’s largest student-run community service organization, as well as an executive board member for Global Health Brigades at UC Berkeley. With Global Health Brigades, he participated in two separate service trips to Honduras where he and 30 of his peers set up medical and dental clinics in rural villages while also assisting in the construction of sustainable water, sanitation, and home ventilation systems. Alejandro also has a strong penchant for tackling issues of inequality domestically, and was a member of Destination: College, an Americorps-funded program that aims to increase access to higher education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds who live in the Bay Area. Additionally, he has previously worked as an SAT tutor for The People’s Test Prep Service, a student organization that provides free SAT tutoring for students living in the East Bay.  Sara Adelman, Development Studies Sara Adelman is a fourth year Development Studies major with a concentration in Public Health and Geography with a regional focus in Sub-Saharan Africa. Forefront in her studies has been the issue of the community based health care, nutrition and agricultural initiatives in developing countries. She is currently an undergraduate research apprentice in the political science department researching for a academic paper that examines the correlation between natural resource scarcity and violent ethnic conflict in Ethiopia. Sara is the founder and President of Berkeley's Chapter of the ONE Campaign, a campus organization focused on raising public awareness about development issues among college students in political leaders for smart policy and effective programs, particularly in Africa. During the summer of 2010, Sara worked in Shirati executing qualitative and quantitative nutrition research in order to build a community run kitchen to feed the women and children in the hospital. She also volunteered with HIV/AIDS outreach programs and micro-finance projects for local women's groups. Awarded the Foreign Language and Area Studies she speaks intermediate Swahili.  Yulia Zektser, Molecular and Cell Biology: Neurobiology Yulia Zektser is graduating from UC Berkeley in May 2012 with a degree in Neurobiology. Her research follows a strong scientific background focused on genetics and population genomics. She is writing an honors thesis in a bioinformatics lab at Berkeley and has worked at UCSD on medically-geared genetic analyses. To gain a deeper understanding of the healthcare process, Yulia is very active in student-run local public health ventures. For the past two years, she has TAed a public health seminar (PH 116) which aims to expose undergraduates to the diversity and necessity of the field. She was a group leader and health mentor with Peer Health Exchange, teaching the Rape and Sexual Assault and Narcotics workshops to high school freshmen. Yulia also taught general biology laboratory as a UGSI and has interned for the Hillel Foundation to increase undergraduate outreach. She recently founded Elderly Escort at Berkeley, a group which bridges the gap between college students and elders of the Bay Area. Yulia is currently the undergraduate liaison for the Bay Area Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience and has had the opportunity to shadow various doctors at UCSF.  Dr. Bwire Chirangi, MD, MPH, Shirati KMT Hospital In addition to his medical degree as the Chief Medical Officer at the Shirati District Hospital, Dr. Bwire Chirangi earned a Master's in Public Health from Maastricht Holland, where he studied attitudes among rural Tanzanian women about using trad`itional birth attendants versus medical doctors at labor and delivery. He is also involved in community water and nutrition projects outside of the hospital. |
Team |
