Ready to Roll
SPH's Yesim Tozan awarded career-boosting Peter Paul Professorship
Until this month, Yesim Tozan, a School of Public Health assistant professor of international health, had been used toflying under the radar, quietly scrambling for grant opportunities tofund her research into childhood malaria.
Now, she says, "I feel like I’m ready to roll."
Tozan has been awarded a 2008 Peter Paul Career DevelopmentProfessorship by Boston University, which she will use to pursue herresearch into the neurocognitive consequences of childhood malaria andthe associated socioeconomic costs. The award, which provides $50,000a year for three years in salary support and research funds, wasestablished in 2006 with a gift from entrepreneur and philanthropistPeter T. Paul (GSM’71), a member of the University’s Board of Trustees.
Tozan, who joined the SPH faculty last year, isone of three recipients of this year’s awards, which recognizeoutstanding young faculty within the first two years of their appointment to BU. Dean Robert F. Meenan (MED’72, GSM’89) nominated Tozan, and she was selected from nominees from across BU schoolsby the Provost’s Office.
Tozan says the award will allow herto continue research on the neurocognitive burden of severe falciparummalaria in young children, using a study group of about 12,000 childrenwho were part of a recent multiyear drug trial.
She and other researchers at the SPH-based Center for InternationalHealth and Development want to explore the socioeconomic consequencesof malaria in developing countries by looking closely at neurocognitivedeficits that can impact child development, educational outcomes, andfuture productivity.
"My target is to improve estimates of the socioeconomic costs of thisdisease for children and communities," she says. "We don’t know whathappens to these children when they survive a severe malaria episode,what the effects of these neurocognitive deficits will be." Theresearch aims to "address an important gap in our understanding of theimpact of malaria on child growth and development."
Tozan says the award provides resources and the opportunity to dive intowork she feels passionately about, while also making her feel a part ofthe larger BU research community.
Before coming to SPH, Tozan was a research associate at the FogartyInternational Center of the National Institutes of Health, whereshe continues as a guest researcher. She has been involved in studieson the cost-effectiveness of a childhood antimalarial treatment,rectal artesunate, and on the use of DDT for malaria control.
Tozan was a lead author of the UN Millennium Project’s report on malaria,which included recommendations for scaling up key interventions for theprevention, treatment, and control of the disease in affected countries,to achieve the malaria target of the Millennium Development Goals.
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