The Boston University Global Development Policy Center will have its inaugural ceremony later this month, but it’s already bringing the BU community together for dialogue on solving global issues.
Professors, faculty and students all gathered Monday evening to discuss their research and build interdisciplinary connections at the Global Development Policy Center’s first Research on Tap discussion.
The discussion featured 15 faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Public Health, the College of Engineering and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. Each presenter gave a four-minute overview of a recent or ongoing research project and then gathered afterwards with other attendees for a reception to discuss their work.
Kevin Gallagher, the inaugural director of the GDP Center, said the Research on Tap discussion serves as a way to get members of BU’s vibrant development policy research community familiar with the new GDP Center, as well as with each other.
“BU has a long history of excellence of research on development policy issues,” Gallagher said before the event. “The center’s job is to amplify that work … so we can leverage BU’s strengths across the campus and engage with policy dialogue across the world.”
Jacob Bor, a professor of global health in SPH, gave the third presentation of the evening. Bor discussed how people underestimate the efficacy of HIV treatment in preventing the transmission of the virus.
“It’s rare that you find such a significant knowledge gap in public health,” Bor said, “especially in the midst of an intervention that’s being implemented specifically targeting this.”
After the presentations were over, Bor said he was excited to see whole groups of faculty doing research on topics he has never been exposed to in his time working at BU.
“That got the creative ideas flowing, thinking about options for collaboration,” Bor said. “It was also just really neat to see people’s work at the cutting edge here.”
Another presentation of the evening came from Adil Najam, the dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies. Najam discussed his research regarding the perceptions of climate and security in Pakistan.
Najam said that perhaps the most significant finding from his research is that water is the underlying problem of almost every issue facing a nation like Pakistan.
“The total number of Indians killed by [Pakistani] in 70 years of war is less than the Indians killed in the city of New Delhi in one year because of dirty water,” Najam said. “If you’re the mother of a child, it doesn’t matter if your child dies at the end of a gun or at the end of a tap — your child is still dead.”
Najam added that in academia, deaths from human and natural causes tend to be treated differently.
“We as journalists, as scholars and as policymakers, think of one death as a statistic and one as a national tragedy,” Najam said.
Regina Joseph, a second-year SPH graduate student, said she was particularly interested in Najam’s presentation because it connected closely with her classwork.
“One of my projects this past semester was focusing on cholera in Haiti,” Joseph said. “We learned that the biggest problem in those underdeveloped countries is their source of water … It’s important for students to see that there is research in so many different areas, and if they’re interested in it, they can get involved and maybe it’ll spark some ideas for their own research.”
Andree Entezari, 25, of Indianapolis, Indiana, said events like this Research on Tap discussion are important because they allow people of different skill and education levels to discuss pertinent issues and work together.
“People like me, that are new to the field, and people that are well-versed and have a lot of academic background — it’s good to mix those two levels of interest and understanding, so that work can get done across the board,” Entezari said.
Xiaoyue Wang, a second-year graduate student in ENG, said she attended the discussion because she realized the importance of the professors’ work on the global community.
“As humans we all care about how people live,” Wang said. “I really care about people who live in this world and how we can improve their lives.”
Shaun was the Editor-in-Chief for the Spring 2019 semester. Before that, he was the Multimedia Editor, the Layout Editor and a News writer. He also sat on the Board of Directors. Follow him on Twitter @shaun_robs.
