Anushka Reddy Marri poses smiling behind the Talbot Building, flanked by banners celebrating the School of Public Health’s 50th anniversary. PHOTO: MEGAN JONES

Education

Certificate Spotlight: Infectious Disease with Anushka Reddy Marri (SPH’24)

A recent graduate and current research fellow in the Department of Global Health shares insight into SPH’s MPH certificate in infectious disease.

Anushka Reddy Marri’s hometown in India is a lot different today than she remembers it from her childhood.

Marri (SPH’24) comes from Medchal, an outer suburb of the major South Indian city of Hyderabad. When she was born, Medchal was just a village dotted with traditional clay kutcha houses with tiles roofs. But as Marri grew, Medchal—like many peri-urban areas across India—also grew. Over the course of the next two decades, hundreds of thousands of people flowed into Medchal from surrounding villages seeking proximity to economic opportunities in Hyderabad.

“When I look back at my school time,” Marri says. “[Medchal] was so empty. We had a school bus that picked us up and we went to school in 15 minutes, but now, all the towns are so full of people, and the traffic is so bad, that it takes us an hour and a half to get to my school.”

After graduating high school, Marri moved to the more rural neighboring district of Adilabad to attend medical school. There, she earned her MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) degree and briefly practiced as a physician before a calling to research led her to leave all she knew behind to pursue an MPH with certificates in epidemiology and biostatistics and infectious disease at the School of Public Health.

Marri, the 2024 recipient of the prestigious Leonard H. Glantz Award for Academic Excellence, spoke with SPH and reflected on how witnessing stark contrasts in healthcare access between urban and rural India ultimately paved her path to public health.

What drew you to the infectious disease (ID) certificate and how does what you learned apply to your work today?

My medical school was in a tribal area, and a big issue was that many patients came to us at a very end-stage of disease because they didn’t have access to a hospital. There were villages with just 200–300 people, no bus service, and people often relied on a bullock cart to get to a once-weekly bus, which many day laborers couldn’t afford to take the time off to use. I saw patients with TB and HIV, where stigma was still very strong despite government efforts to raise awareness. A lot of my thinking about research comes from that experience serving on the front lines.

I knew I wanted to contribute upstream by improving healthcare access. Non-communicable diseases are prevalent, but communicable diseases are preventable—we can treat TB, but we are losing so many people. ID and epidemiology/biostatistics felt like a natural choice. BU’s strong HIV and TB research made it a perfect match. I took many HIV and TB courses and now work in the field, so it was the best decision I could have made.

Are there specific courses you took as part of the certificate that were particularly memorable?

Whenever anyone asks me, I always recommend David Hamer’s course on emerging infectious diseases (PH 825). Another course that cemented my interest was the epidemiology of TB (EP 784) with Professors Bob Horsburgh and Leo Martinez. With just four students, we had one-on-one conversations with the professors and Teaching Assistant (TA) that were really inspiring. I then did a directed study with Bob. Those courses were transformative and helped me get my current job.

What is your job now, how did you find it, and what does it entail?

I work as a research fellow in the Department of Global Health under Professor Sydney Rosen, a legendary HIV researcher and a pioneer in health economics and outcomes research. As graduation approached, Bob and my research assistantship supervisor Kayoko [Shioda] recommended me to Sydney. That’s how supportive the department is.

Going in, I was worried I didn’t know enough because my background is in medicine, not research. I thought, ‘Everyone here has 30 years of experience and I’m not even 30 years old!’ It took me a little while to get into the zone, but all the work I did during my MPH and practicum really helped me and now I feel very confident in my role.

We do HIV service delivery research in South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi. I was happy doing HIV research, but then the stop-work orders went out after some federal funding was pulled. We heard firsthand how patients and providers were affected. It was scary, but it also made me grateful to be in this field because improving service delivery helps curb the HIV pandemic.

You mentioned getting research experience during your practicum. What did you do, where did you work, and how did you find your position?

During the TB class that I took, Dr. Pranay Sinha, an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center who does a lot of TB research in India, gave a guest lecture and told us to reach out if we were interested in his work. So, I met with his project coordinator and got started. It ended up being so meaningful—Pranay remains my mentor to this day.

I worked on analyzing data from the National Family and Health Survey to see how nutritional indicators such as undernutrition or anemia changed before and after COVID. We quantified the data by wealth quintiles and showed unfavorable changes for low-income populations. I made my first poster on the research and presented it at the 2025 Society for Epidemiology Research conference.

Do you have any advice for students considering the ID certificate?

Initially, I felt lost and worried the field was too competitive—so many students were interested in TB and HIV. But working with my ID professors and in the Department of Global Health, I learned that the competition I feared is actually one of the field’s greatest strengths: the many people committed to curbing these diseases. Collaboration is a major factor in success.

Where do you hope to take your career in the future?

I always thought being a doctor and being a researcher were mutually exclusive, but Pranay helped me see I can be both. I’m planning to apply to an internal medicine residency and then pursue an infectious disease fellowship. Eventually, research will be my primary focus, but my work with patients as a physician is what drives me.