ESE doctoral students awarded inaugural Dennis and Mireille Gillings fellowships for work at Institut Pasteur

November 11, 2014

Maya Nadimpalli

Patsy Polston

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill doctoral students Maya Nadimpalli and Patsy Polston are inaugural recipients of the prestigious Dennis and Mireille Gillings Global Public Health Fellowships, a collaboration between UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and the Pasteur Foundation, the U.S. affiliate of Institut Pasteur.

The fellowships include the opportunity to work on the Institut Pasteur campus or in one of Institut Pasteur’s International Network sites.

The awards were announced Nov. 7 at a special ceremony at the Governor’s Mansion in Raleigh, N.C.

The two-year postdoctoral fellowships, renewable for a third year, are designed to acknowledge and advance the very best of the next generation’s public health leaders. Eligibility required candidates to be UNC Gillings School doctoral students graduating in 2015, or recent graduates who had earned a doctoral degree at the School within the last three years.

Nadimpalli will receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree in environmental sciences and engineering (ESE) in spring 2015. She holds a Master of Science in ESE from the Gillings School and a Bachelor of Arts and Science degree in environment from McGill University in Canada. She will study with Dr. Didier Guillemot at Institut Pasteur in Paris.

Polston will receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree in ESE in spring 2015. She also holds a Master of Science in Public Health degree in ESE from the Gillings School and Bachelor of Science degrees in electrical engineering and physics from Tuskegee University. She will study with Drs. Arnaud Fontanet and Francis Delpeyroux at Institut Pasteur.

The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health is the number one ranked public school of public health in the nation, and is ranked number two overall. Now in its 75th year, the school has a mission to improve public health, promote individual well-being and eliminate health disparities across North Carolina and around the world.

Based in Paris and founded by Louis Pasteur in 1887, Institut Pasteur is one of the world’s leading private nonprofit centers for scientific research including immunology, molecular biology, and the neurosciences. Established in 1891, Institut Pasteur’s international network comprises a multinational team of scientists and includes 32 research institutes on five continents.

Drs. Mireille and Dennis Gillings

Mireille Gillings, PhD, is founder, chair and chief executive officer of HUYA Bioscience International, a leader in accelerating global development of novel pharmaceutical product opportunities originating in China. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Radboud University, in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and is the first woman to be appointed to the board of Quintiles. Gillings is co-founder and vice-chair of GHO Capital and serves on the Institut Pasteur Institute advisory board.

Dennis B. Gillings, PhD, CBE, founded Quintiles in 1982 and is a leading pioneer of the contract research organization industry. He is executive chair of Quintiles and also served as chief executive officer. He received a Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics from the University of Exeter, and for more than 15 years, he served as professor of biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, receiving an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University in 2001. In 2004, Gillings was awarded the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) and in 2014 was appointed World Dementia Envoy by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron.