Special Recognition and Accomplishment for Epi Ph.D. student

One of the important focal points for the Department of Epidemiology's research program is epidemiology of salmonellosis, with Professor Mahdi Saeed as the lead principal investigator in this domain. With Professor Saeed in the mentoring role, Muhammed Younus recently completed his Ph.D. in Epidemiology. Part of Dr. Younus' graduate program included completion of research on the geographic distribution of Salmonella infections, which was published in the International Journal of Health Geographics in 2007 (6:56doi:10.1186/1476-072X-6-56), and then was posted to the Biomed Central online repository. We have just been notified that this publication, entitled "The role of neighborhood level socioeconomic characteristics in Salmonella infections in Michigan (1997-2007): assessment using geographic information system," has been designated by www.biomedcentral.com <http://www.biomedcentral.com/>  as one of the most 'highly accessed' articles in its collection. As described, the 'highly accessed' designation identifies "articles that have been especially highly accessed, relative to their age, and the journal in which they were published." The department wishes to recognize the other members of the research team and dissertation guidance committee, as well as the on-going departmental partnership with the Michigan Department of Community Health, without which this research would not have been possible.

The members of the research team, in addition to Drs. Younus and Saeed, were: Edward Hartwick , Azfar A Siddiqi, Melinda Wilkins, Herbert D Davies, Mohammad Rahbar,  and Julie Funk. The research was supported, in part, by the Department of Epidemiology reserve fund, as well as NIH/ MSU Microbiology Research Unit.

Postscript. Upon successful defense of his doctoral dissertation in January 2008, Dr. Younus accepted an appointment as Associate Director, Epidemiology, with the Pfizer Global Research and Development. He will be based in New York City, NY.