Dr. Nisha Jain Garg joins the Franklin Fellows Program from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, TX where she serves as the Professor of the Departments of Microbiology & Immunology and Pathology. She also serves as a member of the PTHE study section at the National Institutes of Health and Associate editor of the American Journal of Pathology.

As Franklin Fellow at the US Department of State/US Agency for International Development (USAID), she will serve as Senior Technical Advisor for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). She will be USAID's primary representative at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and other organizations financing country programs to address selected Neglected Tropical Diseases throughout the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region. She will work closely with USAID's Bureau for Global Health, Office of Health, Infectious Diseases and Nutrition, the team planning and implementing the Neglected Tropical Diseases program for President Obama's $63 billion Global Health Initiative (GHI). Additionally, she will assist in the development of policy and practice to meet President Obama's GHI goal to eliminate onchoceriasis from the Americas by 2014.

Dr. Garg holds a PhD and MS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Haryana Agricultural University, India, and a BS in Biology from the Kurukshetra University, India. She has developed a strong and successful research program in the field of tropical infectious cardiomyopathy. Her research efforts on pathogenesis of and vaccine development against Chagas disease, funded extramurally, have produced 45 peer-reviewed journal articles and built international collaboration with Chagas researchers in Argentina, Mexico and Brazil.