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Arend Voorman, who received his PhD in Biostatistics in 2014, lined up a job with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation well before graduation. He'll be working with its polio eradication team.
"I am quite excited," says Voorman. "The potential for eradication in the next few years is very motivating." India was recently declared polio-free, he notes, but there have been outbreaks in countries previously declared polio-free, such as Syria and Cameroon.
As a statistician, Voorman says he will help the Foundation with risk modeling in order to prioritize resources, and also with surveillance efforts to help detect circulating poliovirus.