Faculty interview- Sara Tosi @02647875

The day of the interview we arrived in class and took quite a bit of time to get organized and settled while we waited for our faculty advisors to arrive. We asked Dr. Kai, our group’s advisor, to explain the rubric of the research project to us, which she did in depth. Then we split into pairs to find professors to interview. Tashiana and I went in search of sociology professors. We ended up leaving our contact information for some professors but nobody got back to us. Melat and Melissa had better luck than we did. They interviewed Dr. Barpha S. Mitra for our project. Dr. Mitra is a biochemist and a professor at Howard University. Dr. Mitra made some interesting comments that helped us direct our research on the AIDS epidemic in the District of Columbia. Dr. Mitra said that the population in the District of Columbia is very closely genetically linked to Africa, where the AIDS epidemic is most severe. Dr. Mitra’s comments showed us that we had to look at many variables as possible reasons for the HIV/AIDS rate being so high in our area. There isn’t one hard and fast reason, making AIDS very complicated to study.