Alex Bozzette (SFS ’12) Wins Circumnavigators Grant: Gervase Programs: Learning to Lead

Alexander Bozzette (SFS ’12, Carroll Fellow) of San Diego, C.A. has been awarded the 2011 Circumnavigators Club Foundation Grant to spend his summer abroad conducting a self-designed research project. Awarded to one School of Foreign Service junior each year, the Raymond M. Dinsmore Study and Research Grant funds ten-weeks of study in a minimum of six countries on at least three continents of students’ choosing.

In line with his passion for international health, Alex will be studying the challenges to and contemporary, low-cost solutions for diagnosing multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in low-resource settings. MDR-TB is a rapidly spreading, deadly pandemic that disproportionately affects developing countries which lack the technology and expertise to diagnose drug resistance in TB-positive patients. Though the itinerary is subject to change, he plans to focus his qualitative efforts by interviewing domestic anti-MDR-TB policymakers, local laboratory supervisors, and relevant NGO representatives in Ecuador, Peru, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Tajikistan, Russia, and India.

Alex is a recent graduate of the School of Foreign Service majoring in Science, Technology, and International Affairs with a concentration in Global Health. Outside of the classroom, he was highly involved in the Georgetown International Relations Club and served as Secretary-General of its collegiate Model United Nations, the 38th National Collegiate Security Conference. In the future, he longs to combine interests in international relations and medicine down a road which will help to improve the state of health care in developing countries.