Kanya Long is a virologist and public health policy researcher. She is currently an Assistant Adjunct Professor in the new Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UCSD. Prior to this, Kanya served as Roger Revelle Fellow in Global Stewardship, an endowed AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship position, and Health Specialist in the Agriculture Global Practice at the World Bank, working with a program to expand laboratory and disease surveillance capacity in West Africa.
Kanya aims to design disease surveillance strategies and foster collaborations that will lead to more equitable public health policies. Currently, Kanya is working with others to identify methods for self-governance in the development and testing of gene drive organisms for public health and conservation. She has a long-standing interest in reducing divides between the laboratory and field, with current work to understand how community engagement can guide the development of new health technologies. Kanya also aims to promote community resilience in the face of climate change and new epidemic diseases and has contributed to the development of contact tracing capacity at UCSD and for San Diego County.
Kanya obtained an MHS in international health, health systems management, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a PhD in microbiology and immunology from the University of Texas Medical Branch. Her laboratory and field research has focused primarily on understanding arboviral transmission dynamics, including the epidemiologic importance of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infections, and the potential for urbanization and emergence of enzootic vector-borne viruses. She has lived and worked over seven years outside of the U.S., including in northeastern China, Cameroon, and the Amazonian region of Peru.