The Infectious Diseases Laboratory (ID) Fellowship

The Infectious Diseases Laboratory (ID) Fellowship trains and prepares scientists for careers in public health laboratories and supports public health initiatives related to infectious diseases. The fellowship’s mission is to provide a high quality training experience for the fellow while providing workforce capacity to the public health laboratory community.

The program is a full-time working fellowship for bachelor’s-, master’s- and doctoral-level scientists. The program term is one year, with a possible extension. Fellows are placed in state, local and territorial public health laboratories as well as environmental, chemical, agricultural and food safety laboratories to receive training in bench-level laboratory skills and methods and assist with high-priority infectious disease testing, surveillance and control measures. Fellows may focus on foodborne illnesses, sexually transmitted diseases, vector-borne diseases, antimicrobial resistance, respiratory diseases or another discipline area, depending on the fellow’s interests and available host laboratory opportunities. Fellows will gain an understanding of the public health laboratory system and how it relates to infectious disease research, prevention, surveillance and control.

​​​Once in their host laboratories, fellows are su​pe​​rvised by an experienced mentor and work on bench-level projects proposed by the host laboratory. Fellows may have opportunities to collaborate with other state, local, territorial or federal public health laboratories. In addition to project-specific work, fellows participate in program orientation and distance-based training and learning activities to achieve proficiency in select public health laboratory core competencies.