PHHP faculty member and students receive UF International Center awards
College of Public Health and Health Professions faculty member Alba Amaya-Burns, Ph.D., and graduate students Manuela Corti and Milap Sandhu are recipients of awards from UF’s International Center.
Amaya-Burns, a clinical associate professor in the department of behavioral science and community health, received an International Educator Award. She came to the University of Florida after working for five years at USAID-El Salvador as the infectious disease project manager specialist at the U.S. Embassy. There she was responsible for the management and implementation of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis programs. At UF, Amaya-Burns has established international educational programs to benefit disadvantaged communities in El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. She has also sought to establish relationships with international universities, especially for Master of Public Health students and for doctoral students in the college and across campus.
Amaya-Burns holds an affiliate position with the Latin American Center and is one of the founders of UF’s new initiative to create a certificate in global health through the College of Medicine.
Corti, a licensed physical therapist from Milan, Italy, is a student in the college’s rehabilitation science doctoral program. Corti has participated in three task forces in the Upper-Extremity Research Initiative, implemented transcranial magnetic stimulation techniques in the Neural Control of Movement Lab, and contributed to the development of a National Innovative Research Grant to the American Heart Association. She also presented a paper at an international meeting within her first year in the graduate program.
Sandhu, a native of India, is investigating treatments to improve respiratory recovery after cervical spinal cord injury as a student in the rehabilitation science program. He is already co-author on several publications and is in line to be first author on three more research projects in the near future. Sandhu has received grants from the college and the Tallahassee Memorial Neuroscience Center’s Bryan W. Robinson Endowment to support his ongoing research program.
Dr. Alba Amaya-Burns (left) at a clinic in El Salvador.
Left to right: Milap Sandhu, Dr. David Fuller, Dr. Carolynn Patten, Manuela Corti and Dr. Ronald Rozensky.
