Congratulations to Dr. Afreenish Amir and Dr. Angel Desai who were selected to serve as Chair and Deputy-chair of ISID's Emerging Leaders Program. Both will work closely with Robert Heyderman, the new Chair of the Program, the ISID office, and all Emerging Leaders in order to fulfill the objectives of this group.

Dr Afreenish Amir is a medical microbiologist with over eleven years of experience in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases. She is currently working as a Laboratory Coordinator for the CDC Global Health Security Agenda project at the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, Pakistan. She is responsible for implementing different aspects of the National Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance, WHO’s Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS), and AMR Surveillance and Advocacy Initiatives in Pakistan. She is the focal point for Environmental Surveillance for Cholera – a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF); Candida auris surveillance (GLASS fungi) and for a BMGF funded COVID-19 Grant for Pakistan. She was recently selected as a Course Coordinator for the MBA in International Health Management Program at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute.

Dr. Afreenish Amir has submitted her PhD thesis in Microbiology (nanomedicine). She is a GIBACHT fellow and facilitator (Germany), Harvard Kennedy School and Geneva Centre for Security Policy alumna, ISID Emerging Leader in International Infectious Diseases (USA), Regional Coordinator for the Global Health Security Next Generation Network (USA), Master Trainer for Biosafety (PBSA), Infection prevention/control (NIH) and Consultant in Clinical Microbiology for the American Society of Microbiology.

Angel Desai is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Davis. Apart from her clinical responsibilities, she has been conducting research with ProMED and HealthMAP as well as the International Society for Infectious Diseases since 2017 where she focuses on leveraging informal surveillance methodologies to discern epidemiological trends on emerging diseases and outbreaks. She has a particular interest in displaced and other vulnerable populations. Her other interests include global infection prevention and control measures in resource-limited settings and high consequence pathogens.

Angel obtained her Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 2007 and M.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013. She completed her internal medicine residency at the University of Washington where she was involved with research on the impacts of climate change on global disease distribution. She received a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was an Emerging Leader in Biosecurity Initiative Fellow through the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in 2019.

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