My research interests lie in developing better, cheaper, and faster diagnostics for infectious diseases that disproportionately afflict those in poverty. I have previously used my training in molecular biology to develop field-friendly ultrasensitive diagnostic tests for low-density asymptomatic malaria which are thousands of times more sensitive than rapid diagnostic tests and which have allowed for scaling up of molecular epidemiological surveys in support of malaria elimination. My focus is now on developing improved diagnostics for another top infectious disease, tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (TB) leads to approximately 1.4 million deaths world-wide, with 95% of those deaths occurring in the developing world, making TB the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent prior to COVID-19. Current diagnostics are unable to distinguish between TB patients who have/have not achieved functional cure after 2 months of therapy, necessitating all patients to take a 6 month treatment regimen – even though a majority are known to be cured after 2 months. My goal is to develop diagnostic tests that are able to accurately identify patients who can safely benefit from a shorter treatment regimen, while at the same time identifying patients who respond poorly to therapy (approximately 5% of patients will fail therapy even after 6 months). To achieve this, I have been performing research for the past 3+ years under two active IRB protocols with TB patients from the GHESKIO centers in Port au Prince, Haiti. Combining RNA-expression profiling with novel microbiological/molecular techniques capable of detecting cryptic MTB populations that are normally undetectable by standard assays (such as CFU), I am currently developing novel molecular assays that are better able to monitor treatment response in TB patients.