Toiling in the Margins

Alli Roshni wants women to be able to give life and sustain it without passing along potentially deadly infections. She also wants children stricken by infection to get the treatments they need to survive.

“HIV is one of the diseases that most affects marginalized populations,” says Roshni, a senior at Oberlin majoring in biology and economics. “It’s really tragic for a child to have to grow up with the disease.”

Starting in August, Roshni will devote a year to working with patients, practitioners, researchers, and grassroots organizations in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Indonesia who deal with pediatric HIV and AIDS, which are often contracted during pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, adolescent sexual contact, or injectable drug use.

Roshni’s work is made possible by a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a highly competitive honor that allows recipients to pursue original, independent projects outside the U.S. Named for the longtime leader of IBM, Watson Fellowships include a $40,000 stipend and a year’s worth of college loan payments.

Watsons for 2023 have been awarded to 42 graduating college seniors from 20 states and four countries. Two of the fellows are from Oberlin: Roshni and fellow graduating senior Emma Hart, who will venture to South Africa, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand to observe programs that create dialogues with males to promote emotional vulnerability and reduce violence.

Roshni comes from Delhi, India, where her parents have worked in social service and social justice causes for many years. “I’ve been interested in public health since middle school,” says Roshni, who devoted a year to volunteering with mobile health-care teams in remote parts of India after completing high school.

She says that Oberlin biology professors Mary Garvin, Yolanda Cruz, and Laura Romberg helped her not simply to better understand health problems, but also to empathize more deeply. During Winter Term, she observed cardiac surgeries and researched the field at Massachusetts General Hospital. Now she’s finishing up an honors thesis on heart disease—another illness especially common among marginalized groups.