Ball Receives Graduate School Grant
Takiyah Ball, a graduate research assistant in Population Health and Pathobiology, has received a $1,000 Diversity Graduate Assistance Grant for the 2017-18 academic year.
A microbiologist by training, Ball is in her third year at NC State working on a Ph.D. in comparative biomedical sciences with a focus on population health, with plans to graduate in May 2018. Her eventual goal is to work as an outbreak investigator for the Centers for Disease Control, “and/or continue working in Global Health.”
Previously she worked for the United States Department of Agriculture on the animal portion of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS). In that capacity she was asked to help train staff in Uganda on how to set up the lab and start an AMR surveillance program in that country similar to existing programs in Europe and the United States. The initiative focuses on cattle and poultry (which is their largest commodity) now with hopes to expand this to other commodities, the environment, and the human population using similar methods in the future. This is also the focus of Ball’s Ph.D. project.
The purpose of the UNC Campus Scholarship Program and the Diversity Graduate Assistance Grant programs is to promote diversity at the graduate level at NC State.
Ball has earned several previous grants during her time at NC State, including a travel grant from the International Association for Food Protection, a grant for study abroad to Botswana, the LEAD mentorship fellowship program, and the NC State Tuition Assistance Grant.
Ball holds a bachelor of science in cellular biology, a bachelor of science in microbiology and a master of science in animal science with focus on reproduction and physiology from the University of Georgia and masters of public health with focus on prevention science from Emory University.
