My name is Miwako Kobayashi.
My name is Althea Grant-Lenzy.
I'm Alex Alex Macedo De Oliveira.
My name is Bin Zhou.
My name is Richard Quartarone.
I am Brandi Limbago.
My name is Tiffany Brunson.
I am a lead public health analyst.
I am a medical epidemiologist.
A health communication specialist.
I'm the associate director for Laboratory Sciences.
I'm a senior science adviser.
I'm the Associate Director for Epidemiologic Science
in the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
The Mission of NCIRD is to protect the public's health through
immunizations and the control of respiratory diseases.
The interventions that we support, like vaccination,
allow us to have an impact on people's survival.
Our laboratory work supports not only how we understand
disease transmission domestically, but we also have an international scope.
We inform surveillance for respiratory diseases.
We look for the emerging strains
that are going to be important for developing vaccines.
Each year, millions of vaccine doses go into people's
arms, contain the antigens from one or more of the viruses
that we prepare at the CDC.
My career
path to public health started when I was in medical school in Brazil.
Like a lot of people at CDC, I kind of fell into public health.
I'm originally from Japan and I am an infectious diseases physician by training.
I started out as a journalist
and after working at a software company,
got a job at a local health department designing their first web site.
My career path to CDC started in New York.
I'm from New York.
I went to the State University of New York at Stonybrook.
Prior to joining CDC, I worked in Cambodia working on tuberculosis control.
I have a Ph.D.
in biochemistry and molecular biology.
My Ph.D.
study was on influenza virus and vaccines.
I got a biology degree there and went on to get a Masters in hematology.
I was always fascinated by the virus and I wanted to have
a research career and to contribute to public health.
I am an infectious disease physician.
And as such, we did have to follow a lot of CDC guidelines.
I came down to Georgia and went to Morehouse
School of Medicine, where I got a Ph.D.
in molecular
biology and started working at the CDC shortly after.
I wondered if one day I'll be able to be behind the scenes working at CDC.
And I did.
What inspires me about my job
is that I have an opportunity
to work on issues that impact people's lives in real time.
Our laboratory scientists, these people are working so hard every day
behind the scenes and they are generating the data
upon which we make so many of our public health decisions.
The work that you do impacts not only the population
in creating immunity across the country
and across the world, but you really get to see
and understand the personal impact of that immunity,
all of that resistance to disease is based on interaction
between a health care provider and an individual.
If you understand the larger picture that we're all working toward
and how maybe this small piece that you're doing impacts
vaccine development. That will allow you to
to expand, to do more, to be more creative in how you think about your work.
We work on pathogens that are constantly changing,
bugs that are constantly rearing their ugly heads.
So you have to be ready for change at any time.
I get to be involved in work that could potentially impact
the health of many people.
If you have a passion to do something that really matters
and will make people healthier, I think this is the right place to come.