Q&A with King Center Predoctoral Research Fellow Suhi Hanif

Suhi Hanif was a predoctoral research fellow at the King Center from 2022 to 2024, with a focus on infectious disease epidemiology. In Autumn 2024, she will begin her MS in Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Stanford, with her recently-awarded Prime Minister's Scholarship from the government of Bangladesh.

Tell us about yourself and your background. What drew you to apply for the Predoctoral Research Fellows Program at the King Center?

I became interested in public health after working as an intern in Save the Children’s health program for Rohinya refugees in Bangladesh. I was drawn to the predoctoral fellowship because I wanted to gain research experience related to infectious disease epidemiology. I had also never taken epidemiology classes before as my undergraduate degree was in cell biology. This program gave me the opportunity to take epidemiology and biostatistics classes. 

What projects did you work on during your time at the King Center? What global development challenge were you aiming to tackle? What was your role on the team?

I worked on a trial looking at the effect of replacing soil floors with concrete floors on child enteric parasitic worm infections and diarrhea. 70% of homes in Bangladesh have soil floors and soil is an overlooked pathway for the transmission of these pathogens. Concrete floors can reduce contamination and protect young children in this context. I coordinated activities between Stanford and our partner research organization in Bangladesh. My work included training enumerators, literature reviews, conducting qualitative interviews and data analysis.

What did you learn from working on a research team with faculty members, graduate students, and other researchers?

The study that I have been working on is interdisciplinary and has given me the chance to learn from environmental/civil engineers and a child development expert. I also learned a lot about integrating sustainability into public health interventions in low-income countries, which is not something that I have heard a lot about before. I realized that it is possible to integrate sustainability into interventions in low-resource settings and interdisciplinary research is needed to achieve that. 

As part of your predoc fellowship, you were able to take classes at Stanford. What was your favorite class or the one you felt you learned from the most?

I really enjoyed my intermediate biostatistics class because it helped me better understand some of the methods that I had previously used in my research work. 

How would you describe the research community at the King Center and Stanford? How did you connect with other predocs and researchers on campus either through your research projects or outside of them?

I had the opportunity to work with PhD students and postdocs who were always friendly and eager to mentor. I helped them with wet lab experiments that were a part of our study. Their mentorship was valuable since my previous wet lab experience was from undergraduate courses. Other than that I have reached out to professors related to work or just for advice. Everyone at Stanford is genuinely passionate about their research and eager to help.

What are your goals and ambitions for whatever’s next in your journey? How did participating in this fellowship program inform your future plans?

My fieldwork experiences during this program made it more evident to me that climate change can negatively impact the spread of environmentally transmitted infectious diseases in disadvantaged communities and epidemiologic studies can help governments make the right preventative public health decisions. I am excited to start an MS in Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Stanford next fall. In the future, I want to pursue a career in academia in the future working on epidemiologic research that can contribute to informing public health policy.