Peter Kilmarx, MD, Acting Director, Fogarty International Center

Rachel Sturke, PhD, MPH, MIA, Acting Deputy Director, Fogarty International Center

Andrey Kuzmichev, PhD, Communications Director, Fogarty International Center

Peter Kilmarx, MD, Acting Director, Fogarty International Center

Dr. Kilmarx is Acting Director of the Fogarty International Center and Acting Associate Director for International Research at the National Institutes of Health. He joined Fogarty as Deputy Director on July 1, 2015, and assumed his current roles on January 15, 2023.

Dr. Kilmarx is an expert on infectious disease research and HIV/AIDS prevention. During his tenure at Fogarty he has led analysis of NIH global health activities, built coalitions with high-level NIH and external stakeholders, and represented the Center and NIH in national and international forums. He co- lead an initiative to transform African health professional education and research, resulting in the formation of the African Association for Health Professions Education and Research (AFREHealth), as well as the African Postdoctoral Training Initiative (APTI), which brings African postdoctoral fellows to NIH. He has also focused on efforts to increase equity in global health research and build global capacity for pandemic preparedness .

He previously served as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Country Director in Zimbabwe, providing oversight for 30 CDC staff who managed implementation of the U.S. efforts to reduce HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria. A retired Rear Admiral and Assistant Surgeon General in the U.S. Public Health Service, Dr. Kilmarx served as the CDC Ebola response team leader in Sierra Leone in September-October 2014, and as principal deputy team leader in Guinea in January-February 2015.

Previously, he initiated the CDC response to the Ebola outbreak in Kasai Occidental, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in 2007, and led household surveillance in the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, DRC, in 1995.

Dr. Kilmarx held a variety of leadership positions at the CDC, including senior advisor to the Director for Health Reform and chief of the Epidemiology Branch—both in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. He also served as director of the CDC partnership with Botswana to combat HIV/AIDS, TB and related conditions, as well as the chief of the CDC’s Sexual Transmission Research Section in Thailand.

Previously, he completed assignments in Pakistan and the DRC. An experienced clinical trials manager, he has served as principal investigator on microbicide trials in Thailand, as senior investigator on TB and HIV trials in Botswana, and as principal investigator on HIV studies he initiated at public health facilities in Zimbabwe.

After earning his M.D. from Dartmouth-Brown’s Combined Program in Medicine, Dr. Kilmarx completed both his internal medicine residency and infectious disease clinical fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. He is a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He has published numerous peer- reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and serves on the editorial board of Sexually Transmitted Diseases. He began his international career as a Peace Corps volunteer in the DRC (then Zaire), where he helped develop fisheries that are still productive today.

Dr. Kilmarx has received numerous awards including the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Distinguished Service Medal for a distinguished USPHS career responding to HIV/AIDS and other infectious disease threats and building health research capacity worldwide, and the USPHS Presidential Unit Citation, for “extraordinary courage and the highest level of performance in action throughout the United States Government's response to the Ebola outbreak.

Rachel Sturke, PhD, MPH, MIA, Acting Deputy Director, Fogarty International Center

Dr. Rachel Sturke joined the Fogarty International Center in 2006 and currently serves as the Acting Deputy Director for the Center in addition to her roles as Deputy Director and Senior Scientist in the Division of International Science Policy, Planning, and Evaluation and the Center for Global Health Studies.  

Dr. Sturke is an expert in implementation science and oversees a portfolio of global projects that include a focus on building research capacity in this discipline in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and using innovative platforms to bring practitioners together with decision-makers and program implementers from LMICs. She has engaged in this work in LMICs across the world and has extensive experience in India, Ecuador, Peru, and sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to her leadership role in implementation science, she led the evaluation portfolio for Fogarty, which she continues to oversee today.

Dr. Sturke has served as faculty on numerous implementation science training courses including at the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases Implementation Science School. She is an advocate for global health and research and capacity building in implementation science and is an active member of the NIH Dissemination and Implementation Science Working Group, leads a trans-NIH working group focusing on building capacity globally in this field, and has co-chaired the global track for the NIH-sponsored Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation Science.  

Dr. Sturke obtained her Ph.D. in population, reproductive, and women's health from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health with a focus on gender, violence, and HIV in South India. She received both a master’s in public health and a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University.

Andrey Kuzmichev, PhD, Communications Director, Fogarty International Center

Dr. Andrey Kuzmichev joined Fogarty in 2013, where he serves as the communications director, overseeing the work of the center’s Office of Communications that helps amplify the successes of the center’s grant recipients and trainees, publicize global health funding opportunities, advocate for global health research, and promote center’s partnerships programs. The team uses various digital and print media to support Fogarty-related events, outreach, and partnerships.

Andrey Kuzmichev received PhD in Biochemistry from Rutgers University and University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and completed his postdoctoral training at NIH/NINDS. He then served as Investigator at Lieber Institute for Brain Development, part of Johns Hopkins Medicine, where he studied stem cell biology. Andrey transitioned from bench science to science communication by completing a detail in the NINDS Office of Communications and Public Liaison, which was followed by a position of a science writer in the Office of Communications within NIH’s Office of Disease Prevention. Most recently, Andrey served as a communications advisor in the Office of the US Surgeon General, where he coordinated publication of Public Health Reports, the official scientific journal of the US Surgeon General and the US Public Health Service.