FELLOWS
APHL Fellowship Programs Continue Critical Work into 2021
by Heather Roney , MA , manager , Fellowships
APHL completed recruitment for its 2021 Fellowship Programs and applications are currently under review . Incoming fellows will begin their assignments in APHL and CDC public health laboratories in the fall .
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic , APHL launched the
COVID-19 Laboratory Associate Program to rapidly deploy scientists to meet the immediate , shortterm workforce needs of APHL member laboratories . Over 25 associates are currently working in local and state public health laboratories .
COVID-19 Response Fellows continue to provide support to public health laboratories across the country , including :
• Verification of laboratory tests
• Development of validation protocols
• Development of training materials for point of care testing
• Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test
• Participation in the workflow of SARS-CoV-2 sequencing
• Analysis of quality control metrics .
Fellow Valeria Patritti accepted a new position as project manager at Memorial Sloan Kettering ’ s Integrated Genomics Operations Unit .
Bioinformatics Fellows continue in their fellowships , with projects spanning involvement in COVID-19 response to assisting with an ongoing project related to next generation sequencing ( NGS ) quality management . Several fellows learned about nationwide sequencing work by attending AMD Virtual and the
American Society of Microbiology ’ s ( ASM ’ s ) NGS conferences . Current fellow Tara Gallagher and former fellow Sarah Schmedes were part of the winning team for AMD Virtual ’ s first-ever AMD Bioinformatics scavenger hunt contest .
Newborn Screening Fellows continue to progress in their projects and participate in weekly journal clubs to learn about sequencing , variant discovery , variant annotation and genomic databases . Samantha Marcellus presented at the 2020 NBS Symposium on integrating Cloud capabilities for infectious diseases and newborn screening for Texas Department of State Health Services . Bryce Asay created web scraping tutorials as a resource to extract data from the web . He also helped create a NBS curriculum for fellows , develop a tool to convert custom . vcf files into readable hash table format , and an in silico database tool for benchmarking bioinformatics pipelines at the Utah Public Health Laboratory . Jessica Respress trained with the core sequencing facility at the Wadsworth Center and new MySEQ machine , and is part of the initiative to start using a custom 55 gene panel for
severe combined immunodeficiency ( SCID ). Lauren Nufer evaluated Cystic Fibrosis ,
Lysosomal Storage Disorders ( LSDs ), Hemoglobinopathies , and Galactosemia workflows to implement changes to the NBS program at Virginia ’ s Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services . Scott Riley is optimizing the biotinidase assay for detecting biotinidase deficiency in newborns as well as SCID and
spinal muscular atrophy ( SMA ) assay at the Maryland Department of Health .
Antimicrobial Resistance Fellows continue assisting host laboratories with programmatic priorities , test implementation and surveillance activities . Several participated in the national AR Lab Network All-Region Meeting through facilitation of discussions and presenting to laboratory and epidemiology partners across the nation . Former fellow Mimi Rey assisted in the response to the
Candida auris outbreak in California and gave a presentation on antifungal resistant C . auris during ASM ’ s Southern California Branch meeting , highlighting the growing public health threat . n
28 LAB MATTERS Winter 2021