Leadership

Michael Rich, MD, MPH is a global health physician and leading expert in the field of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). 

Dr. Rich has worked with MDR-TB programs in more than fifteen countries, and is the primary author of multiple WHO guidelines on the management of drug-resistant TB (2006 and 2008), including the most recent 2015 WHO guidance on the subject of drug-resistant TB titled “Companion handbook to the WHO guidelines for the programmatic management of drug-resistant tuberculosis” (WHO/HTM/TB/2014.11).  

From 2005-2009, Dr. Rich served as the Director of PIH Rwanda, where he led a comprehensive district health-strengthening project in three districts in rural Rwanda. In 2013, Dr. Rich co-founded a non-governmental organization called PIVOT, which works in rural regions in Madagascar and provides health systems strengthening services that are modeled after PIH’s community-based activities. Dr. Rich currently serves as the Senior Medical Officer of PIVOT, where he contributes to organization’s strategic direction and leads the development of clinical and educational infrastructure. 

Dr. Rich received his MD from the University of Massachusetts, and his MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. He currently holds positions as an Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Assistant Professor at the Harvard Medical School, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

KJ Seung is a co-Leader of the endTB project and a Principal Investigator (PI) of the Observational Study. 

Dr. Seung joined PIH in 2001, after it was awarded a Gates Foundation grant to develop a scalable model for MDR-TB treatment. Dr. Seung worked closely with the Peruvian Ministry of Health to care for patients with MDR-TB, and to develop clinical protocols that eventually laid the foundation for WHO normative guidelines. 

In 2007, Dr. Seung began working in Lesotho as part of PIH's effort to combat the dual epidemics of MDR-TB and HIV, and developed the first community-based MDR-TB program in Africa. Since 2009, he has been active in North Korea, working with the Eugene Bell Foundation to introduce MDR-TB diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. Lorenzo Guglielmetti is an Infectious Diseases doctor and an Epidemiologist with a profound interest for clinical research in the field of Mycobacterial Infections.

After graduation in Medicine and specialization in Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the University of Verona, Italy, he pursued a research career at the National Reference Center for Mycobacteria in Paris, France, where he is currently a post-Doc researcher. In parallel to research activities, Dr Guglielmetti has trained his clinical skills in the management of drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB across different settings: specialized Hospitals in the Paris region, MSF-supported centers in Georgia and other countries of Caucasus/Central Asia, and as part of the Consilium for complicated TB and non-tuberculous mycobacterial disease of the French National Reference Center for Mycobacteria. Dr Guglielmetti holds a Master’s degree and a PhD in Public Health and Epidemiology at Sorbonne University (Paris, France).

The main research topic of Dr Guglielmetti’s work is the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis. The field experience in hotspot regions for drug-resistant TB has given a pragmatic focus to his academic works, which aim to improve the management of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) patients, in particular by studying the role and potential combinations of the new MDR-TB drugs. He has published more than 70 articles on peer-reviewed journals on the topic of tuberculosis and other mycobacterial infections.

Dr Guglielmetti is passionate about networking and international collaboration. Since 2014, he has been part of the Steering Committee of the Tuberculosis Network European Trialsgroup (TBnet), the largest European research/training network on TB. Member of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) and of its Study Group on Mycobacteria (ESGMYC) since 2011, he has been elected as Chair of the ESGMYC in 2022.

Dr. Uzma Khan is a physician and public health professional working in TB control in LMICs. She is a part of endTB leadership and currently a central Co-Investigator for the endTB clinical trials. She supports endTB and other TB activities at the Pakistan clinical trial site.  She has previously served as Co-Principal Investigator of the endTB observational study.   

She is a Senior Director at Interactive Research & Development (IRD) Global, an international non-profit which focuses on public health interventions in the developing setting.   

Uzma has extensive experience in overseeing, implementing and conducting MDR-TB research, and has provided technical assistance to TB programs in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.  This includes supporting programmatic, monitoring & evaluation and research activities in MDR-TB in Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Viet Nam, Indonesia, Tajikistan, Nepal, Kenya, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia.   
 
Uzma holds a medical degree, as well as a Masters in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her interests include implementation research, health equity, advocacy and policy. 

Carole Mitnick, Sc.D. is co-PI of the endTB and endTB-Q trials and PIH Director of Research for the endTB project. She is Professor of Global Health & Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Associate Epidemiologist in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (BWH). She joined PIH in 1996 and began to work on programmatic support, research (observational and experimental), policy, and advocacy related to increased access to high-quality, appropriate treatment for TB, especially for drug-resistant TB. After completing her doctoral degree in Population and International Health at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health (2001), she joined the HMS Faculty. She has worked closely with PIH sites in Peru, Kazakhstan, and Lesotho to strengthen research capacity as well as the links between direct, comprehensive care and research. Together with colleagues at PIH/HMS/BWH and ministries of health, Dr. Mitnick published seminal work documenting feasibility and outcomes of community-based treatment for MDR-TB and XDR-TB in low- and low-middle income countries. She has contributed to numerous international (WHO, CDC/ATS) guidelines on the treatment of MDR-TB. Committed to improving the long-term quality of life for people who experience TB, in 2021, Dr. Mitnick also launched research in interventions for post-TB lung disease.