Next Generation tb researchers

Dr. Simon Mendelsohn is a physician-scientist and Senior Researcher at the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI), University of Cape Town. Prior to joining SATVI, he gained clinical experience managing TB and HIV in South Africa’s public health sector and implemented HIV and TB programs in Malawian prisons with Médecins Sans Frontières. As a clinical investigator, he has contributed to over 30 TB vaccine and therapeutic trials and diagnostic observational studies, advancing our understanding of TB treatment and prevention strategies.

Dr. Mendelsohn’s broader goal is to advance TB diagnostic, preventive, and treatment strategies that are scalable in low- and middle-income countries. His research focuses on the development and clinical validation of novel diagnostics and biomarker-guided strategies for detecting and treating TB in high-burden settings. He is particularly interested in non-sputum-based approaches for diagnosing persistent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and asymptomatic TB, integrating blood-based transcriptomic signatures and novel molecular techniques to guide targeted interventions. He is also interested in implementing biomarker-guided, pragmatic clinical trials of TB therapeutics, prevention, and vaccines—enrolling individuals at greatest risk of disease to reduce study population size and follow-up time, thereby delivering results faster and more cost-effectively.

Through the Future Leaders Program, Simon hopes to strengthen his ability to identify, prioritize, and secure future funding, particularly through complex grant writing for multi-PI and multi-center projects. He also seeks to develop skills for translating research into policy and practice, to learn how to engage policymakers effectively, communicate research findings across sectors, and position research programs to influence global health guidelines, implementation, and funding decisions.

Dr. Menezes is a physician-scientist with a PhD in Human Pathology and specialized training in clinical research at Harvard Medical School. He studies the intersection of infectious diseases, epidemiology, and planetary health. His research focuses on public health challenges, particularly in the social and environmental determinants of treatment outcomes, the integration of climate data into disease modeling, and precision medicine approaches. Dr. Menezes has led and collaborated on multiple cohort studies within the RePORT-Brazil network. He currently coordinates the Planetary Health and Science Ensemble (PHASE), an initiative dedicated to advancing global health through interdisciplinary and data-driven responses to climate-sensitive diseases.

As a RICC fellow, Dr. Menezes aims to investigate the impact of climate variables on TB infection and outcomes using RePORT-Brazil data, develop spatiotemporal models integrating remote sensing and patient-level data, and strengthen his skills in climate data analysis and machine learning. He also seeks to mentor early-career researchers, publish high-impact findings, inform climate-adaptive TB strategies, and secure funding to expand this research across other RePORT cohorts and national public health datasets.

Dr. Casalme is a young investigator who earned her Medical Doctor (MD) degree from the De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute (DLSMHSI) in 2017 and received her MD license in 2018. She is currently taking a Diploma Program in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of the Philippines, Manila. She has been a sub-investigator in various clinical trials focusing on preventive and treatment studies for multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) in both adults and children since 2019. Her involvement in these TB projects has inspired and sparked her interest in childhood and maternal TB. She looks forward to the RICC Post-doctoral fellowship as it will help develop her capacity on epidemiological TB research. Dr. Leonardo Martinez, a leading expert in epidemiology from Boston University, will mentor her. The fellowship program, through its robust mentoring program, will provide her with vast opportunities for academic and professional growth. 

Dr. Bih is a post-doctoral research fellow under the supervision of Professor Novel N. Chegou within the Immunology Research Group at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She obtained her PhD from the University of Oslo, Norway, in collaboration with Stellenbosch University, during which she evaluated host Mycobacterium tuberculosis blood biosignatures as diagnostic tools for TB in low and high-endemic settings. She has authored several peer-reviewed articles in accredited journals and worked across projects evaluating TB diagnostic and monitoring response biomarkers for pulmonary and other forms of extrapulmonary TB for clinical application.

Dr. Bih ‘s research area for her postdoctoral fellowship focuses on validating published blood-based host biosignatures for tuberculosis disease in a multicohort analysis. She hopes to leverage her scientific leadership and understanding of biomarker approaches to advance biomarker research to enhance patient outcomes, ultimately transforming healthcare with personalised and effective interventions. In addition, Dr. Bih is also actively involved in supervising students and takes on leadership and project management duties to coordinate studies within her research group, foster communication with collaborators, and ensure smooth lab operations.

Dr. Looney is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI). She received her PhD in Pathobiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where she investigated the role of small non-coding RNAs in the response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection.

Following her PhD, she joined SATVI at the University of Cape Town. Her postdoctoral work evaluates single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) to identify immune correlates of protection elicited by the M72:AS01E vaccine. She will use scRNAseq to integrate insights from the M72 and RePORT-SA studies to compare immune features associated with natural control of TB disease vs. vaccine-mediated protection. Dr. Looney intends to complete her postdoctoral fellowship in single-cell immunology by the end of 2025. Ideally, she would like to remain in South Africa to keep her priority on the communities most affected by TB and scientific capacity building in endemic settings.

She is working towards eventually establishing a research group that specializes in the data-driven design and evaluation of novel TB vaccine candidates in an academic setting, such as SATVI, which specializes in TB clinical trials. Dr. Looney’s immediate focus is applying for independent research funding, timely completion of research projects, and producing high-impact publications. Dr. Looney also intends to continue mentoring junior lab members as she progresses and take on new students and postdoctoral fellows whenever opportunities arise.