University of Michigan Medical School News

The inaugural A. Oveta Fuller Award was recently awarded to Ivana Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida (UF).

Parker will present a seminar on October 31, 2024, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The A. Oveta Fuller Award is a career development award for emerging leaders in the areas of microbiology and immunology, infectious disease, or health disparities whose goals and accomplishments benefit society in the spirit of A. Oveta Fuller, Ph.D., who until her untimely death in 2022, was a virologist and scientific trailblazer on the faculty at the University of Michigan and an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1988, Fuller was the first Black woman to be hired into the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan.

Much like Fuller, who worked extensively on HIV education and prevention in Zambia and South Africa, Parker is passionate about alleviating the burden of HIV in disproportionately affected communities of women.

Her lab employs multi-omics, systems biology, immunology, and computational approaches to characterize immune responses to pathogenic stimuli known to increase HIV risk. She is particularly interested in how vaginal microbes interact with host cells and how this increases risk for diseases.

In 2018–2019, Parker was a Fulbright Scholar, completing a year-long study at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. There she worked to alleviate mother to child transmission of HIV by unveiling mechanisms of immune activation in BCG-vaccinated infants.

She sought to empower vulnerable young women through science education and mentoring programs in collaboration with Baleka Wellness, a fitness program founded in South Africa to improve emotional, mental, and physical health for vulnerable youth.

During her post-doctoral work, she became aware of hard-to-treat diagnoses, such as bacterial vaginosis (BV), that dramatically increase the risk of HIV acquisition, affect women globally, and lack effective therapeutic strategies.

“The award’s committee and Dr. Fuller’s family are pleased to recognize Dr. Parker with this award in memory of our dear colleague, wife and mother,” said Beth Moore, Ph.D., Nancy Williams Walls Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

“We were impressed with the clear parallels between Dr. Parker’s work and Dr. Fuller’s legacy. We are delighted that Dr. Parker shares Dr. Fuller’s passion for research that impacts marginalized communities, public health and has the ability to leverage faith relationships to improve health outcomes.”

Prior to being a Fulbright Scholar, Parker was a postdoctoral fellow of the American Society for Microbiology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) within the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. At CDC, she evaluated the impact of antiretroviral therapy on diagnostic assay approaches and identified trends to optimize assay design.

Parker received her M.S. in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Her doctoral thesis investigated the effects of pro-atherogenic shear stress, HIV proteins, and antiretroviral therapies on the vasculature using in vivo and in vitro models.

During her time at Georgia Tech, she received an NSF graduate research fellowship and was selected to be a trainee on an NIH Cell and Tissue Engineering Training Grant. She was also awarded a summer grant from the Whitaker International Program to develop artificial aortic valves in Cape Town, South Africa.

Her recent awards include the 2023 UF “40 under 40” Award , and a UF International Center Global Fellowship in 2021. She is first author in peer-reviewed journals such as JAIDS (2018) and the Journal of Immunological Methods (2017).

Hiking Table Mountain with a group of youth from Gugulethu township and her children. Hiking is a foundational activity for Baleka Wellness, an organization where she mentored several young women, encouraging them to pursue careers in science and advocating for education and wellness.

Dr. Parker and her family in South Africa, by a quote that inspired Dr. Parker throughout her journey.