Support

Financial contributions from alumni and friends are vital to accomplishing CTEGD’s mission to pursue cutting edge research in emerging global diseases and train students in this field.

To truly impact global health through research, support from a variety of sources is required and donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations play a significant role. Direct state support accounts for only about one-third of UGA’s annual operating budget. And essentially all research is funded extramurally through grants and gifts.

Regardless of size, your gift can have an impact.

How Does Your Gift Support CTEGD’s Mission?

The CTEGD Fund

The CTEGD Fund is an unrestricted fund that allows us to support various initiatives of the students and faculty. A large portion of this fund goes towards the annual Molecular Parasitology/Vector Biology Symposium, an annual regional scientific meeting that has free registration.

In addition, your tax-deductible gift provides travel opportunities to trainees. Such opportunities include attending national and international conferences as well as travel to international research sites. These international research opportunities (most lasting 6 weeks to 3 months in countries endemic for the diseases we study) are life-changing experiences for our USA graduate students and postdoctoral trainees.

The CTEGD Fund also allows us to invite leading researchers throughout the year for special seminars.

Daniel G. Colley Training in Parasitology Fund

One day Daniel Colley raised his hand to volunteer, setting in motion five decades of scientific adventures. It was 1969, and Colley’s postdoctoral adviser, ByronWaksman, a renowned immunologist at Yale University School of Medicine, had stepped into the laboratory and asked if anyone wanted to go to Brazil. Colley, today a UGA immunologist and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, became fascinated by schistosomiasis, a parasitic worm infection plaguing poverty-stricken communities in sub-Saharan Africa and around the world.

After his Brazil sojourn, Colley arrived at Vanderbilt University in 1971 to begin setting up a lab and a career-long effort to understand the immunological paradox of schistosomiasis. In 1992, he joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a year later was promoted to director of the Division of Parasitic Diseases. After retiring from the CDC, he arrived at UGA in 2001 as professor of microbiology and director of the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases. During the past decade, Colley has been director of UGA’s Schistosomiasis Consortium for Operational Research and Evaluation (SCORE). In June 2020, Colley retired from the University of Georgia. He has been named Professor Emeritus.

That trip to Brazil was instrumental in shaping Colley’s career. As a mentor, he is passionate about providing the same opportunity to new scientists. Early in his career at UGA, he established the Training Innovations in Parasitological Studies (TIPS) fellowship through funding from the Ellison Medical Foundation, funding that has since ended. In honor of Daniel Colley’s commitment to understanding diseases of poverty and training the next generation of scientists, the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases is establishing the Daniel G. Colley Training in Parasitology Fund to continue his legacy.

New Initiative: Enhance Training Opportunities

CTEGD is one of the premier centers for tropical disease research in the world. We attract substantial applications from visiting professors, postdoctoral fellows, and potential graduate students from the US and throughout the world and support many of these trainees via our research and training grants.

However, we lack the ability to support most non-US applicants and visiting scientists or the travel of our students to foreign sites for field research experiences. These types of programs require sizable endowment resources. Donors can have naming rights to scholarships/fellowships and the satisfaction of knowing they are supporting developments and discoveries that will promote health, education, and economic development in lesser developed countries.

A competitive and prestigious fellowship program would bring the highest quality of students and scientists to UGA, increase the quality of research here and raise the prominence of UGA across the globe. Scientists returning to their home countries after experiences at UGA would be not only better positioned to direct quality research initiative in their countries but also offer collaborative and translational research opportunities to UGA faculty and field training opportunities for our graduate and undergraduate students. Quality endemic country experiences for our UGA students can be life altering and can attract and keep the best minds working on these neglected disease problems.

Programs within this initiative

Latin American Fellows Program. A named, competitive graduate and post-doctoral training fellowship (like a Rhodes or Fullbright) for Latin American scholars. The initial focus on Latin America is to capitalize on the substantial number of bright and well-trained individuals but with limited research prospects within their own countries.

Visiting Scientist Research Program. 3 – 12 month salary-supported research stays for up to 5 international scientists per year.

Capstone Experience for Trainees. Bidirectional exchange of graduate students for up to 3-month experiences at UGA or for UGA students at research sites outside the U.S.

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