Kathleen “Kat” Peters
WASH Certificate Program Coordinator
Research Administrative Assistant, CGSW

Kat Peters has more than 25 years of experience working in the public, private and academic sectors. She has been working in public health since 2000 and at the Rollins School of Public Health since 2007. She currently supports the faculty and research staff of the Center for Global Safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) as the Research Administrative Assistant. She is also the WASH Certificate Program Coordinator. Please contact her at kpeter5@emory.edu if you are a currently matriculating or future RSPH student and would like information about the WASH Certificate Program or would like more information about the CGSW.

CGSW research staff are highlighted on the research program websites of their particular faculty mentors and supervisors.

CGSW Fellows include the doctoral and post-doctoral trainees working with CGSW Faculty.  Their biographies and research interests are listed below. There are also many undergraduate and masters students working on research projects with CGSW Faculty.  For more information about CGSW students, please click here. 

Sabrina Haque, MPH is a pursuing a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences. She is interested in impact evaluation, policy, and implementation science of poverty reduction and development programs in low- and middle-income countries. She currently works on applying implementation science theory and methods to water, sanitation, and hygiene research and leads an evaluation on the delivery of household water filters in rural Rwanda.

Frederica (Freddy) Lamar, PhD, MSPH passed her dissertation defense and was awarded a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences. She is interested in the intersection of WASH and behavior change interventions in low and middle income countries. She is working on formative research in Mozambique exploring childhood exposure to chicken feces and opportunities for interventions. Dissertation title: ChickFlows in Maputo, Mozambique: High-risk Behaviors, Management Practices, and Pathways for Childhood Exposure to Enteropathogens from Chickens.

Freddy will be transitioning to the FIRST program at Emory as part of her postdoctoral training.

April Ballard, MPH is pursuing a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences. She is interested in social, behavioral, and environmental determinants of health in the context of WASH among rural and vulnerable populations. She is currently working on a study in Northern coastal Ecuador to understand sociobehavioral and environmental determinants of child exposure to animals and animal feces, and the impact on the gut microbiome. Dissertation title: Sociobehavioral and Environmental Determinants of Child Exposure to Animals along an Urban-Rural Gradient in Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador.

​Sydney Hubbard is pursuing a Ph.D in Environmental Health Sciences. She is interested in water and sanitation in urban and peri-urban settings in resource-limited countries. She holds a BS in Biology from the University of Dayton and a MPH in Epidemiology from Emory. She is currently working with Dr. Karen Levy on a study that examines the impact of household drinking water quality on the gut microbiome of infants in Peru.

Julia Sobolik, MS, MPH is pursuing a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences with interests in food safety, enteric diseases, and environmental microbiology in both domestic and international settings. She is particularly interested in norovirus exposure pathways in the agricultural farm environment and interventions that reduce infection risk for fresh produce consumers.

Hemali Oza, MS is pursuing a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences. She is interested in how to quantify climate resilience and how resilience intersects with WaSH, nutrition, and agriculture. She is currently working with Revitalizing Informal Settlements and their Environments (RISE) to measure resilience in the context of urban Indonesia and Fiji. Hemali is also working with CARE to identify ways to assess outcome resilience and sustainability of the ongoing Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA), Titukulane, in Malawi.

Courtney Victor, MPH is pursuing a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences. She is interested in improving environmental exposure assessment in WaSH research using multiple methodological approaches (i.e., laboratory analysis and infectious disease modeling).