A year that exposed how our health intertwines with everything from racism to social media misinformation taught valuable lessons that shouldn’t be lost amid the relief of increasing vaccinations against COVID-19.

Congratulations to Dr. David Andrews for receiving a 2021 Graduate Mentor of the Year Award from the Graduate School. Recipients of this award are selected based on student nominations.  As outlined on The Graduate School website, "The Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year Award serves the dual purposes of recognizing outstanding mentoring provided by individual faculty and of reminding the university community of the importance of mentoring to graduate studies."

During Summer 2020, May 2021 graduate Lily Centra interned at Hanger Clinic: Orthotics and Prosthetics’ Manhattan, New York, location. She was able to shadow Certified Prosthetist John Rheinstein and his colleagues. During her time at the clinic, she was exposed to a variety of patients with upper limb prostheses, lower limb prostheses and orthotics. Centra was also able to learn a plethora of prosthetic fabrication and modification techniques. 

Karen Shapiro is a Junior Policy Analyst intern for the Policy and Brain Health team at AARP. She has been conducting brain health research with a focus on brain health as people age. Shapiro has also published reports on women’s brain health and the impact of music on brain health.

Gabrielle Frohlich is the founder of an internship in partnership with the Victor Center Community Health Awareness (Education) Initiative (CHAI) at Nicklaus Children's Hospital. The initiative’s mission is to increase genomic literacy among and access to prenatal genetic testing for college communities and their campuses’ surrounding populations.

Bridgette Heine is a graduate assistant for the Teaching and Learning Center in the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences (CMNS). She is also a research assistant for Dr. Hongjie Liu in the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department, where she is working on two projects. The first is modeling Covid-19 in a university setting by looking at how different research groups have modeled Covid in other settings and then applying those later to a university setting.

Shifali Mathews was part of the first class of students in the accelerated BS/MPH program. She completed her bachelor's in public health science in 2020 and earned her MPH in environmental health sciences in 2021. She is conducting climate change and health research with Dr. Amir Sapkota.

In 2020, Richard Remigio successfully submitted and was awarded an R36 Dissertation grant. He defended his dissertation proposal and presented two abstracts at the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) virtual conference. Remigio is working on his dissertation and is about ready to defend it.

Darya Soltani, a senior Public Health Science major at the University of Maryland, has served as the project leader of the Peru team of the student organization Public Health Beyond Borders for the past four years. She is also involved in Padres Preparados Jóvenes Saludables, a USDA-funded Latino immigrant family-skills and obesity prevention research project.

The university celebrated the accomplishments of our graduates in a virtual commencement ceremony on Sunday, December 20. The main ceremony can be viewed on the UMD Facebook and YouTube channels. Graduates are encouraged to share their photos and memories on social media using #UMDgrad. SPH graduates should also use #publichealthTerps and tag @UMDPublicHealth. See Public Health Terps' photos and reflections and join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram!