Our Team 

Peter Small, MD

Founding Director, Global Health Institute

peter.small@stonybrook.edu 

 Peter M. Small, MD, is the Founding Director of the Stony Brook University Global Health Institute.  His expertise includes tuberculosis (TB) and global health. For more than a decade Dr. Small was responsible for building and running the innovative TB program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has done seminal work on clinical, epidemiologic, evolutionary, and genetic aspects of tuberculosis. He has deep expertise in translating cutting edge science into drugs, diagnostic methods and vaccines as well as the business and public health processes to get innovative tools to those in need. He joined Stony Brook University to lead the Global Health Institute’s health science research that spans from the molecular level to point of delivery. His focus is on the intersection of fundamental work in ecology, developmental economics, and disease, largely focused on Madagascar.  Dr. Small holds a BA from Princeton University and a MD from the University of Florida.

Lulua Bahrainwala, PhD

Post-doctoral DrOTS Fellow, Madagascar, Global Health Institute

Joe Brew, PhD

DrOTS Project Leader, Mozambique, Global Health Institute

Joe Brew is a data scientist who focuses on the economics of health interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to his PhD research on the economics of malaria in Mozambique (Barcelona Institute for Global Health), Joe Brew works with Lendable on financial inclusion, consults for the World Bank / Better Work, and is a co-founder of Databrew. 

Joe earned his BA at Sewanee: The University of the South (2008), his MA at the Institut Catholique de Paris (2009) and his MPH at Kobenhavns Universiteit (2013). He has previously worked in surveillance epidemiology the Florida Department of Health (USA) and in health research for the Tigray Regional Health Bureau (Ethiopia) and the Barcelona Public Health Agency (Spain).

Pierce Gardner, MD

Senior Advisor, Global Health Institute

pgardner@stonybrookmedicine.edu 

Pierce Gardner is a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Medical School whose career has blended clinical medicine with public health with special emphasis on global health.  Early training in epidemiology at CDC and Infectious Diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital were followed by faculty roles at Harvard and the University of Chicago where he was the clinical director of the internal medicine training program as well as the infectious diseases program.  With a special interest in immunization for adults, he served on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (CDC) and the Defense Health Board.

Throughout his career, Dr. Gardner has been deeply involved in the training of the next generation of students, residents, and junior faculty. In 1989, he came to Stony Brook as Associated Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Medicine. During his tenure, he advocated for global health activities for students and faculty and formalized clinical research opportunities for SB students. In 2001, he was seconded to the Fogarty International Center at NIH where he was instrumental in establishing a clinical research training program for scholars and fellows (both  US and international) which has now provided  early career training to more than 600 clinical investigators.

Kunchok Dorjee, MD

DrOTS Project Lead, Nepal, Global Health Institute

Kunchok Dorjee is a physician-epidemiologist. He has worked as a physician for several years treating various infectious diseases including TB and drug-resistant TB. His work focusses on global control of TB and HIV-AIDS using multi-pronged interventional strategies and innovative technology. He is leading a Zero TB project as a fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for TB Research to eliminate TB in the Tibetan schoolchildren in India using community-based package intervention comprised of education, screening, treatment, and provision of preventive therapy for latently infected children. He is working on developing community-based strategies encompassing community engagement to overcome social barriers in roll-out of the interventions. He is working with Dr. Peter Small in developing a DrOTS project in Nepal to improve TB care for people living in the cut-off mountainous districts in rural and remote Nepal through a community based active case finding, use of drones for specimen/medicine transport for GeneXpert testing, and use of video curriculums and electronic monitors for TB treatment adherence.

He has received medical training from Indira Gandhi Medical College in India, an MPH training from Stony Brook University in New York, and a PhD training in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Simon Grandjean Lapierre, MD MSc

Research coordinator and DrOTS Project Leader, Madagascar, Global Health Institute

Simon Grandjean Lapierre is a trained infectious diseases specialist and medical microbiologist with previous clinical, laboratory and infection control experience in sub-Saharan African countries. He holds post-doctoral graduate degrees in global health and molecular diagnostics applied mycobacterial diseases. His research activities focus on the implementation of new technologies for tuberculosis control and he coordinates the DrOTS project in Madagascar.

Astrid Knoblauch, PhD

Post-Doctoral DrOTS Fellow, Global Health Institute

Astrid Knoblauch is a trained epidemiologist (MSc and PhD) with several years of experience in the private sector and academic institutions mainly focusing on health impact assessment of large development projects in tropical settings. Her expertise is in monitoring and evaluation (M&E), surveillance and response of health interventions and its impacts. Within the DrOTS-project, she will be responsible for M&E and studying the acceptance, technical performance of technologies, impact of the project and its feasibility for scale-up in Madagascar.

William Mallon, MD

Clinical Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine
Chief of the Division of International Emergency Medicine

Luis Marcos, MD

Associate Director of Research, Global Health Institute

Jesse McKinney

Chief Technology Officer, Centre ValBio

Patricia C. Wright, PhD

Distinguished Service Professor, Stony Brook University
Founder and Executive Director, Centre ValBio
Founder and Executive Director, Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments

 Dr. Patricia Wright is a Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Dr. Wright has served as the Executive Director for the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments (ICTE) since 1992 and founded the Centre ValBio Research station in Madagascar in 2002. She has studied behavioral ecology of non-human primates in South America, Asia and Madagascar. Her research interests include primate behavior and ecology, female dominance, male parenting, the evolution of tropical biodiversity, biodiversity conservation, climate change in the tropics and conservation genetics.