Meet the Team

Eric J Nelson

Eric J Nelson M.D., Ph.D.

Associate Professor (tenured)

Dr. Nelson is a pediatric hospitalist and sees patients at UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital. Board-certified in pediatrics, Dr. Nelson earned his medical degree from Tufts University. He then completed a pediatric residency at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University followed by a pediatric global health fellowship from Stanford. 

Dr. Nelson is currently on faculty at the UF Emerging Pathogens Institute and is an Assistant Professor with the UF Department of Pediatrics. Prior to joining UF in 2016, Dr. Nelson served as Pediatric Global Health Physician Scientist and Instructor for the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stanford University.

Dr. Nelson enjoys spending time with his family, playing the cello, sailing and playing soccer.

Molly Klarman

Molly Klarman

Research Coordinator II

I came to Dr. Nelson’s lab in December 2017 after having spent the previous seven years working at two health and community development based NGO’s in rural Haiti. Prior to that I was involved in research in both Latin America and the US spanning diverse fields from household water purification to development of diagnostic tests for parasitic diseases to best agricultural practices for watershed management.

My work with the INACT study involves overseeing all aspects of a needs analysis to investigate the scenario of how does a typical Haitian family deal with onset of illness during the nighttime hours? The study also aims to understand related questions such as what are the specific causes of household diarrhea in children under 5 and can community water pumps be used for bio-surveillance. The resulting data will guide the design of an intervention with the goal of improving access to healthcare at nighttime for Haitian families.

I am especially drawn to the work being done at the Nelson lab because of its focus on bridging the gap between research and actionable public health improvements and I am excited to have the opportunity to contribute to this endeavor.

Md Abu Sayeed

Md Abu Sayeed

OPS-Spons Prjs Non-Clerical

My name is Md Abu Sayeed and I am from Dhaka, Bangladesh. I have completed a BSc and MS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. After completing my these degrees, I started research at the Mucosal Immunology and Vaccinology Lab of International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), focusing on the evaluation of immune responses in cholera and typhoid patients as well as in vaccinees. In 2013, I joined the Global Infectious Disease Research Training Program (2013-2014) at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston. During this period, I worked on the development of cholera conjugate vaccine. Afterwards, I returned to the icddr,b and focused on the development of rapid diagnostic tests for enteric fever and cholera. In the future, my goal is to establish myself as an independent scientist with specific contributions in the field of infectious diseases. To pursue my goal, I joined Dr. Nelson’s lab at the University of Florida as a graduate assistant. I am very excited to be a part of Dr. Nelson’s Lab and I hope our research will have significant impact in the field of infectious diseases.

Katelyn E Flaherty

Katelyn E Flaherty

Graduate Research Fellow

As a future physician-scientist training in public health, Katelyn is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between institutional and community medicine. After earning her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Emory University, she joined the University of Florida MD PhD Training Program in 2018. She completed her preclinical education at University of Florida College of Medicine and passed Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Exam. She is currently appointed as a Graduate Assistant in both the Department of Emergency Medicine and the Department of Environmental and Global Health. Her research goals are to evaluate and to improve prehospital care in low-resource communities. She specializes in global implementation science and recently earned a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship to support her work in Ghana.


Undergraduate Students

Lindsey Brinkley

Lindsey is a third-year undergraduate studying Microbiology and Cell Science with a minor in Pathogenesis. She is interested in attending medical school after her undergraduate studies to become a pediatric surgeon. Lindsey would like to develop her own nonprofit to work on establishing sustainable medical infrastructure around the world. Currently, Lindsey volunteers for Haven Hospice and is on the board for the University of Florida’s Preprofessional Service Organization. In her free time, she loves to run and spend time outdoors seeing what Gainesville has to offer.

Lindsey Brinkley

Ani Vustepalli

Emma Freeman


Collaborators

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

David Sack, MD

David Sack, M.D., is a Professor of Internal Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health with a joint appointments in the Department of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases, Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Sack’s research has been focused on enteric infections and vaccine development for these infections.

International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh

Ashraful Islam Khan, PhD, MSc, MBBS

Dr. Khan’s research currently covers the following two topics: (1). the modeling of realized volatility, which is the sum of squared intraday returns over a certain interval such as a day, in the Japanese stock market and its application to the prediction of future volatility, the option pricing and VaR; (2). the application of Support Vector Machine methods to the volatility modeling and forecasting.

UF College of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine

Torben K Becker, M.D., Ph.D., RDMS, FAWM

At the University of Florida, Dr. Becker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine in the College of Medicine and an Affiliate Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental & Global Health in the College of Public Health and Health Professions.

McGill University

Jesse Shapiro, PHD

Jess Shapiro PhD is an Associate Professor at McGill University. He uses genomics to understand the ecology and evolution of microbes, ranging from freshwater bacterioplankton to the human gut microbiome. His work has helped elucidate the origins of bacterial species, leading to a more unified species concept across domains of life, and has developed genome-wide association study (GWAS) methods tailored for bacteria. He brings these skills and tools to our collaboration to enable discoveries on antimicrobial resistance mechanisms and their impact on cholera infection and transmission.


Administration

Krista L Berquist
Department: MD-PEDS-CELL / MOLEC THERP DIV

Krista L Berquist

Research Administrative Assistant
Phone: (352) 273-8258

Alumni

  • Emilee Cato
  • Patricia H. Rodriquez: Transitioned to Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine
  • Ashton E Creasy-Marrazzo: Completed her PhD and transitioned to a Clinical Microbiology Fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (NYC)