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CUNY SPH is delighted to present the Ferguson Rise fellows for the 2025-2026 school year.
The Ferguson Fellowship Program, named for Dr. James A. Ferguson, provides educational and hands-on research experiences for students in medical, dental, pharmacy, veterinary, public health, and social sciences fields.
The 12-month program focuses on research design, infectious diseases, and health promotion. Fellows receive educational and professional development mentoring experiences at institutions across the country, including CUNY SPH.
Summer fellows, mentored by Associate Professor Elizabeth Kelvin:
Raven Johnson (they/she)
Rice University
Raven is a rising fifth year PhD student in the Computational and Applied Mathematics program at Rice University. They received their bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Dartmouth College in 2018 and their masters in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Claremont Graduate University in 2021. In their free time, Raven enjoys watching and analyzing film (and even works as a projectionist at Rice Cinema) as well as baking.
Kasfia Rahman
Emory University
Kashfia is a rising second-year MPH student at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, where she is pursuing a concentration in Global Health and Infectious Disease Epidemiology. She is interested in exploring the behavioral and social determinants of infectious disease outcomes. She currently conducts research at Emory on HIV and substance use interventions for incarcerated populations in Atlanta. Previously, she also worked at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she coordinated research projects on community-based HIV programs in Uganda and South Africa. This summer, she will be assisting Dr. Elizabeth Kelvin in exploring the chronic health impacts of trachoma and chikungunya among immigrant populations in the United States.
Nabeel Razi
University of California Berkeley
Nabeel is a second-year student in the MPH program at the University of California Berkeley. His curiosity for disease began in grade school with a little Science Olympiad event called Disease Detectives. In undergrad, he worked at UC Davis’s Coccidioidomycosis Serology laboratory and learned a great deal about this fungus especially, due to the pandemic and its relationship with COVID. He later graduated from UC Davis with a degree in microbiology and took a job in a Hematology/Oncology lab at UCSF.
Through the fellowship, Nabeel hopes to understand disease on a much larger scale; the various types, mechanisms, environments, and most of all, how to prevent, maintain, and control outbreaks of new diseases.
Velangani Pajwala Tahthireddy
University of California Berkeley
Velangani (Vel) is an incoming second-year MPH student in the Infectious Disease and Vaccinology program at the University of California Berkeley. Vel was born in India and moved to California at 10 years of age. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of San Francisco (USF). Her interest in disease science was sparked as a sophomore at USF in molecular medicine and parasitology classes. Her interest in this field solidified when she learned about malaria and its prevalence in India. Although cases in India are reducing, she still hopes to gain more knowledge and training on how to implement methods/policies better to teach about malaria in schools to bring the cases down further.
12-month fellow, mentored by Distinguished Professor Denis Nash:
Sofia Pesantez
Stanford University
Sofia Pesantez is a graduate of Stanford University, with a master’s degree in epidemiology and clinical research, and an undergraduate BS degree with honors in human biology, concentrating in global public health and human performance. Her research interests lie in helping to bridge global disparities in access to healthcare, specifically in maternal and child health. Her master’s thesis work at Stanford focused on how different risk factors, both clinical and environmental are associated with stillbirth outcomes in Bangladesh. She intends to apply to MD programs this May and looks forward to using her epidemiology skillset to pursue global health work in her future.
Dr. James A. Ferguson was the fourth dean of Tuskegee University School of Veterinary Medicine and the first Tuskegee alumnus to serve in this capacity. As dean, Dr. Ferguson played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Summer Research Fellowship Program, which was launched in 1989 at the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID). The program was created to provide medical and veterinary students with hands-on research experience and exposure to a variety of public health career pathways.
In 1999, in recognition of Dr. Ferguson’s contributions to NCID’s mission and his dedication to mentoring students in public health, the program was renamed the Dr. James A. Ferguson Emerging Infectious Diseases Graduate Fellowship. Over the past 35 years, the program has grown to include numerous well-respected academic institutions, as well as public health laboratories and public health departments.
