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10 program profilesforging powerful educational alliancesBrown-MBL Graduate ProgramApril Shiflett was just beginning her first year of graduate schoolat the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Medical Schoolwhen her advisor, Stephen Hajduk, announced he was leaving tohead up the MBL’s Global Infectious Diseases Program. But insteadof hearing difficult news, Shiflett heard opportunity knock andhappily opened the door.The door led northward to a new school and a new home, andto what is proving to be one of the most exciting years of herscientific life.April Shiflett, First Graduateof the Brown-MBL GraduateProgram in Biological andEnvironmental Sciences“Since I first started out,I’ve been interested inhaving some kind of rolein helping people withdiseases.” — April ShiflettThanks to the Brown-MBL Graduate Program, Shiflett was able totransfer to Brown University and follow Hajduk to the MBL andthe scientific village of Woods Hole. Since then, she has settledinto academic life at Brown and become part of a talented teamof MBL scientists working to tackle one of Africa’s biggest healththreats.Like her advisor, Shiflett’s research specialty is the Africantrypanosome, the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness.The disease, which threatens 60 million people in 36 countriesin sub-Saharan Africa, was arrested for a time, but has recentlyreemerged in the face of political instability, populationdisplacement, war, and poverty.“Treatments are limited and very painful,” says Shiflett. Tocomplicate matters, the trypanosome evades the human immunesystem and effective treatment by switching its genetic code.Undetected, the parasite multiplies in the blood and feeds on itsnutrients, weakening its victim. Left untreated, trypanosomeseventually penetrate the nervous system and are fatal.As part of her graduate studies, Shiflett has spent long hours at theMBL studying two species of trypanosomes: Trypanosoma bruceirhodesiense, which evades the immune system and causes sleepingsickness, and Trypanosoma brucei brucei, which the human immunesystem can kill.