YALE university News Release

New Haven, Conn., USA – Yale University selected Precious Lunga, a Zimbabwean epidemiologist with the UK Medical Research Council, as a 2008 Yale World Fellow. Dr Lunga, who obtained her PhD in neuroscience from Cambridge University, has played an instrumental role in managing the world’s largest public-private clinical trial initiative aimed at developing an HIV-prevention gel for women.

She is a key member of a team which has expanded HIV research capacity in Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa. She has succeeded in bringing together diverse stakeholders, including government agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities, and trial participants, who included approximately ten thousand African women in anti-HIV microbicide trials. Her ultimate aim is to improve health in developing countries and emerging economies.

The Yale World Fellows Program—the only program of its kind—aims to build a global network of emerging leaders and to broaden international understanding. The Program conducts a worldwide competition each year to select 18 highly accomplished men and women from diverse fields and countries for a 4-month leadership program at Yale.

Yale President Richard C. Levin announced the selection of the 2008 Yale World Fellows saying, “I am delighted to welcome this extraordinary group of men and women to the Yale community. Yale will benefit greatly from their presence on campus, and we anticipate that the Fellows will gain new perspectives on their own roles as future leaders.”

“It is a remarkable honor to have been selected to the Yale World Fellows Program,” said Lunga. “I am looking forward to the multidisciplinary challenge of the program and believe my work will benefit enormously from it.”

Selected from outside the U.S. at an early mid-career point, World Fellows come from a range of fields, including government, business, media, non-governmental organizations, the military, and the arts. Joining Lunga this year are a senior advisor on counter-terrorism to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a groundbreaking Chinese public interest lawyer, a leading member of the Ukrainian parliament, and the founding Secretary General of Nicaragua’s Ministry of Defense.

“The 2008 Yale World Fellows, while diverse in background, share both an outstanding record of accomplishment and unlimited potential for future success,” said Yale World Fellows Program Director Michael Cappello. “We are confident that this unique Yale experience will broaden their perspective and enhance their capacity to contribute as members of the growing network of global leaders trained at Yale.”

The Program selection process is intense: the 18 World Fellows for 2008 were selected from a pool of nearly 1,100 applicants from around the world. Four represent countries new to the Program’s network. Since its inception in 2002, 125 World Fellows from 69 countries have been welcomed to New Haven for this Program.

From August to December, the 2008 World Fellows will engage in a specially designed seminar taught by some of Yale’s most eminent faculty; take any of the 3,000 courses offered at the University; participate in weekly dinners with distinguished guest speakers; receive individualized skill-building training; and meet with U.S. and foreign leaders. Past World Fellows have met with then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy, economist Jeffrey Sachs, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, among others.

The Yale World Fellows Program has at its core three main goals: to provide advanced global leadership training to emerging leaders from a diverse set of fields and countries, to link these world leaders to each other and to Yale in a tangible way, and to expand and deepen international understanding at Yale.

Yale University is located in historic New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, the University consists of 12 schools: Yale College, the four-year undergraduate school; the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; and 10 professional schools, including the Yale School of Medicine, the Yale Law School, and the Yale School of Music. Yale has a global reputation for training U.S. and world leaders – including four of the last six U.S. presidents.