 Emily
Gurley '96 knew she wanted to live abroad after graduating with a
bachelor's in history. She grew up traveling the globe, living in
Bangladesh, Honduras, the former Yugoslavia and Switzerland. Now the
only history Emily thinks of regularly is case history, tracking
infectious diseases at ICDDR,B or the Center for Health and
Population Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
After graduation, Emily entered the Peace Corps in Romania,
working with non-governmental organizations to develop their
programs. She discovered an interested in the health programs,
including HIV education and the establishment of a palliative care
training center at Romania's first hospice. While in Romania, Emily
met her husband and they both returned to the states so she could
further her education.
Emily returned to Atlanta to earn her master's in public health
from Emory University. Her transition to public health was "a
natural fit." Emily's dad was a physician and by spending time in
developing countries, she learned the "incredible impact" that
health can have on people's daily lives.
Emily is currently involved in a number of infectious disease
research projects, including encephalitis surveillance - monitoring
patient's symptoms at four hospitals, taking case histories and
sending biological samples to the CDC in Atlanta and Fort Collins,
Colo., to test for over 100 pathogens in hopes of discovering the
cause of encephalitis. Through this project, Emily has had the
opportunity to investigate three outbreaks of the Nipah virus, which
is a newly emerging virus first identified as the pathogen
responsible for deadly encephalitis outbreaks in Malaysia and
Singapore in the late 1990s.
"It's really exciting work," she says of her Nipah research.
During one outbreak, Emily noticed, "all the people who were sick
had been exposed to a man who had died of it a few weeks before."
That outbreak investigation provided the strongest evidence to date
that Nipah virus can be transmitted from person-to-person.
Emily and the Nipah team will continue their year-long
surveillance as part of the Nipah outbreak project, which began this
fall and is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Emily has spent two years tracking infectious diseases in
Bangladesh and plans to spend two more. After that, she hopes to
return to the U.S. to earn her doctorate in epidemiology.
-by Mark DeLong (Carillon, Fall 2005)
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