Rao recognized for work on tropical diseases
Honored with 2016 Anne Maurer-Cecchini Award for research on lymphatic filariasis
Rao
Ramakrishna Rao, PhD, an associate professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, recently received the 2016 Anne Maurer-Cecchini Award, an honor that recognizes outstanding epidemiological or clinical research on neglected tropical diseases.
Rao, of the Division of Infectious Diseases, was recognized for a project that focused on lymphatic filariasis in Sri Lanka. The illness is caused by parasitic worms and spread by mosquitoes and is a major cause of disability in the developing world.
The Anne Maurer-Cecchini Foundation presents 20,000 Swiss francs as part of the honor. Those funds will be used to support additional research on neglected tropical diseases like lymphatic filariasis.
The award, which is given out every other year at the Geneva Health Forum in Switzerland, honors the memory of a young Swiss researcher from the Swiss Tropical Institute who died in an accident at the age of 28.
