Faculty

Karen Day

Working in Papua New Guinea, Karen Day, Ph.D., was overwhelmed by the poverty and disease she saw on a daily basis. "My first reaction was to become a doctor," she says. "Then I stepped back and saw that as a researcher in public health, I could have an impact on a much larger population." Today, Dr. Day is the Chair of Medical Parasitology, Professor of Medicine, member of the Advisory Committee of the P falciparum Genome HapMap Project, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the NIAID-funded Malaria Repository (MR4), Associate Editor for several key global health journals as well as the past director of the Masters in Global Public Health at New York University.

Dr. Day runs a multidisciplinary malaria research group that aims to understand the transmission of malaria and to better define control strategies. The group takes laboratory findings, especially genomics, to the field to investigate the epidemiology of malaria as well as the converse i.e. taking observations from the field to the laboratory to identify molecular mechanisms of parasite biology. She has worked extensively in Papua New Guinea, Asia and Africa. Dr. Day's research integrates the disciplines of epidemiology, immunology, molecular parasitology, genomics, bioinformatics and genetics in population based studies to achieve a better understanding of infectious disease control. "The problems in global health are complex. You can't come at them from just one direction, whether it is medicine, science or policy. We have to integrate many disciplines to get results," she says.