Meet the Team

Felix Knauf, M.D.

was born in Freiburg, Germany, and studied medicine at the University Freiburg, Paris and Berlin. He completed his doctoral thesis in the Department of Physiology and Internal Medicine at Yale University. Felix completed his medical training in Internal Medicine and Nephrology at Yale University and joined the faculty in 2011.
Felix first started working in Uganda in 2007 as a Johnson & Johnson Global Health Scholar. At this time Felix friendship with Robert Kalyesubula began and his love for Uganda. Trishul and Felix started to apply for funding and work on a joint mission to participate in patient care, education and research at ACCESS in 2012. Felix has returned to Germany in 2013 and is currently a faculty member of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health.

Trishul Siddharthan, M.D.

is a post-doctoral fellow in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Siddharthan completed his medical training and chief residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, during which time he conducted clinical work and research in Uganda as a Johnson & Johnson Global Health Scholar and a Fulbright Scholar. He subsequently studied the epidemiology of chronic respiratory diseases in urban and rural settings of Uganda as a Fogarty Global Health Fellow. His research interests include the prevalence, management and economic burden of noncommunicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries. Active sponsored investigations include estimating the prevalence of obstructive lung disease among urban and rural Ugandan populations, implementing novel, low-cost spirometry for the diagnosis of lung disease, and patient-centered approached to NCD management.

Nora Anton

has a background in Intercultural Communication and European Studies and years of experience in international project management, grant-writing and networking at the interface between research, policy and industry. She currently works as an International Affairs coordinator at the Faculty of Medicine at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), where she implements and further develops the Faculty’s internationalization strategy and provides funding and mobility advice to researchers and students. Nora joined the project team in 2015 and has since become a great admirer of ACCESS’s work in Nakaseke.

Helmut Kraus

is the graphic-designer of the project and joined the team in 2015. Helmut studied at the University of Applied Sciences Münster with the focus on visual communication and received the sponsorship prize for his thesis. Already during his studies Helmut worked as a freelancer for numerous agencies throughout Germany. Since 2002 he lives and works as an independent graphic artist in Berlin (helm69.com). Helmut took the fotos for ACCESS, developed the website and designed and illustrated the medical information booklets distributed to the locals in the Nakaseke District.

Tracy L. Rabin, MD, SM

is an assistant professor of medicine and assistant director of the Office of Global Health at the Yale School of Medicine; she co-directs the Makerere University-Yale University Collaboration, a bilateral medical education capacity building partnership. She is a founding member and member of the Governing Board of the Uganda Initiative for Integrated Management of Non-Communicable Diseases (www.uincd.org). Her focus is on global health workforce education and the ethics of short-term work in resource-limited settings.

Asghar Rastegar, MD

is Professor of Medicine in the Section of Nephrology and Director of Office of Global Health in the Department of Medicine. He is also Co-Director of the Yale-Stanford Johnson and Johnson Global Health Scholar program. His long term interest has focused on training of young physicians in in low and mid income countries rof the world. He has worked extensively in Iran and Russia and for the last 11 years in sub-Saharan Africa including Rwanda and Uganda. As a nephrologist have has served as Co-Chair of the Education Committee of the International Society of Nephrology focusing on training of nephrologist in low resource regions.

Bruce Kirenga

is a Senior Lecturer (Pulmonology) and founding Director of the Makerere University Lung Institute. Bruce formally trained in internal medicine at Makerere University and completed specialty registrar training in Pulmonary Medicine at Mulago Hospital and proceeded to complete an additional year of clinical and research training in the Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Yale University, USA. Dr. Kirenga also completed a 2-year Masters clinical research fellowship of the University of Amsterdam offered at the University of Rwanda, School of Public Health in Rwanda. Bruce’s main interest are in clinical and epidemiological research in the areas of obstructive lung diseases and their determinants as well as tuberculosis. He is a mentor of several junior physicians in Pulmonary Medicine and Epidemiology.