China’s role in global health is expanding rapidly due to a confluence of factors, including its role as a major economic force, support from the Chinese Ministry of Health, and growing interest among Chinese university faculty and students.

This year’s Global Innovation Fund awardees represent a number of disciplines across 29 schools, colleges and programs. The funds are managed by the Office of Global Affairs, who had to choose from a record 95 applications. Only 26 applications were awarded funds, and of those, eight involve Global Health faculty.

Awardees were selected through a highly competitive process managed that awards seed grants to projects in two areas: a) innovation in study abroad and b) innovation in global engagement and partnerships.

David Townes, UW associate professor of medicine (emergency medicine), joined the UW faculty in 2001. He is also a public health and medical technical advisor to the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at USAID and a medical epidemiologist in the Emergency Response and Recovery Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Throughout his career Townes has worked in Antarctica, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Russia, Senegal, Tanzania, Turkey, the West Indies and Zambia.

Associate Professor of Global Health and Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences,  Deepa Rao, will speak at the White House during a special two-day meeting on HIV stigma, March 3-4. She was invited by the Office of National AIDS Policy, in collaboration with the NIH Office of AIDS Research, National Institute of Mental Health.