The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted how we engage in global research and scholarship. To hear from UVA’s research community about the challenges that scholars and students are facing, and creative solutions they have come up with over the past few months, the offices of Vice President for Research and Vice Provost for Global Affairs brought together panel of UVA scholars and administrators involved in global research communities to tackle this topic.

The panelists for this townhall event included:

Melur K. “Ram” Ramasubramanian, vice president for research. He is responsible for the strategy and its execution for significantly growing the research enterprise at UVA through a strong partnership with the Provost and UVA’s twelve schools and multiple research centers. He leads university-wide strategic growth activities including the Pan-University institutes, explore-to-build initiatives, and the 3Cavaliers rapid seed funding initiative.

Rebecca Dillingham, Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Global Health. She also holds faculty positions in the Division of Infectious Disease and International Health and in Public Health Sciences. She has led the development of global health training across UVA’s campus as the director of the UVA Framework Program in Global Health, which is supported by the Fogarty International Center of the National Institute of Health.

Brian Owensby, Director of Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation. He is professor of history in the Corcoran Department of History.  His scholarly work has ranged from social and political history in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Brazil to legal and imperial history in seventeenth-century Mexico.