International Child Health Expert to Lead Yale World Fellows Program

New Haven, Conn. — Yale President Richard C. Levin has named Michael Cappello M.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Microbial Pathogenesis, and Epidemiology & Public Health at the Yale University School of Medicine, as the Director of the Yale World Fellows Program.

Since joining the faculty in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Yale in 1996, Cappello has developed a laboratory and field based research program focused on the global health impact of parasitic diseases in children. Cappello’s laboratory group has identified targets for new drugs and vaccines that might reduce the devastating impact of hookworm and other parasitic diseases worldwide. In 2002, he founded the Yale Program in International Child Health, which coordinates and develops global initiatives in Pediatric research, clinical care and medical education. In 2007 the Program established a bi-directional training initiative with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at the University of Ghana aimed at building African research capacity in Global Infectious Diseases.

Cappello’s research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Charles Hood Foundation and the American Heart Association. He has been elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation. In 2007, he was named one of 26 United States Global Health Ambassadors by the Paul G. Rogers Society of Research!America, the nation’s largest not-for-profit public education and advocacy alliance working to make research to improve health a higher national priority.

“Michael’s global health perspective is just one of the many outstanding contributions that he will bring to the mission of the World Fellows Program,” Levin said. “I am extremely pleased that someone of his extensive international experience and understanding will be leading this important global program at Yale.”

Cappello graduated from Brown University in 1984 with a degree in Biomedical Ethics and received his M.D. from Georgetown University in 1988.

He will succeed Daniel Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, who has led the World Fellows Program since its inception.

“Yale is deeply grateful for Dan Esty’s superb leadership,” Levin said. “The quality of the leaders he has attracted to the program and the experience and knowledge he has helped them gain during their time at Yale have exceeded even our high expectations.”

The Yale World Fellows Program is a unique initiative among U.S. universities and a core element of Yale’s commitment to serve as a leading global university. Building a worldwide network of emerging leaders and broadening international understanding, the Program conducts a competition each year to select 18 highly accomplished mid-career men and women from government, business, the media, and civil society organizations representing countries across the world for a 4-month leadership program at Yale.

Yale recently announced its World Fellows class for 2007, which was selected from a pool of 970 applicants. This year’s World Fellows include a top television news broadcaster in China, policy advisers to Russian President Vladimir Putin and to the Egyptian minister of foreign affairs, members of parliament from Singapore and Ukraine and one of Southeast Asia’s most critically acclaimed playwrights.

Since its inception in 2002, 107 World Fellows from 66 different countries have come to New Haven. From August to December, the 2007 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, and participate in a host of special activities. The Program covers all of the World Fellows’ expenses—tuition fees, housing, travel and health care—and grants them a $30,000 living stipend. In addition, all World Fellows, both past and present, are invited to a biennial Return to Yale Forum, where past and current Fellows meet and build a global network of world leaders as well as renew their ties to Yale.