Oct 19, 2020
Josephine Thinwa is a physician scientist at UT Southwestern in Dallas in the field of infectious diseases. She completed her MD/PhD degree in 2015 at UT Health San Antonio and joined UT Southwestern for Internal Medicine residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship as part of the Physician Scientist Training Program. She completed her residency and then Infectious Diseases fellowship in July 2019.
During her infectious disease training, she became very interested in treating HIV/AIDS patients who are prone to severe viral brain infections. To this end, she is studying in the lab how our bodies fight viruses that infect the brain, hoping to develop new treatments. She has several publications in both clinical and scientific journals and has presented her research at numerous regional and national meetings where she received recognition for best poster awards. In 2018, she was featured on the main webpage of the Infectious Disease Society of America website as a member spotlight for her accomplishments thus far. Her goal is to have her own lab within the next few years and continue doing research that impacts patients while maintaining her clinical practice.
By listening to this conversation with Josephine, you’ll learn about:
- Being a black woman and a “double doctor”
- Women and surnames
- Redirecting presentations from hostile audience members
- Addressing insecurities when communicating