Georgina Agyei

Gina is from Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana, a country in West Africa. She attended Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), where she obtained a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Human Biology and a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) medical degree. She was first introduced to lab work during courses like Biochemistry and Physiology taken for the BS Human Biology degree. She conducted an epidemiological study on hand hygiene among high school students in a Ghanaian community during her final years in the MBChB program , which served as a dissertation writeup towards the award of the medical degree. As a requirement for all newly qualified doctors , she worked as a practicing general physician under supervision/houseman at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) for 1 year,  followed by another year at the Kumasi South Hospital. At Kumasi South Hospital , she had the opportunity to work in the Infectious Disease Unit during the COVID-19 pandemic and had hands on experience taking care of patients during a pandemic. The challenges of managing patients with various infectious diseases during her practice encouraged her to move from the bedside back to the bench to acquire more knowledge and skills to help develop better diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. In 2022, she was admitted to the PhD program in Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame , with a focus on microbiology and immunology. At Notre Dame she was awarded the Graduate Justice Fellowship by the Center for Social Concerns. She is currently working in the Santiago-Tirado lab on the intracellular phagosomal virulence activities that enables the survival of the fungal pathogen C. neoformans.