Dr. Karin Nielsen, professor of pediatric infectious diseases, directs the UCLA Center for Brazilian Studies.
The daughter of a Danish father and a Brazilian mother, Nielsen grew up in Rio de Janeiro, where she completed medical school and her residency in pediatrics before coming to UCLA, where she did a five-year clinical research and virology fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases, earned a master’s degree in public health and epidemiology and joined the Geffen school faculty in 1996.
Nielsen is also a leading researcher in HIV treatment, with a specific focus on preventing mother-to-child transmission; her two decades of work have changed HIV standards of care worldwide.
In Brazil, she formed a consortium of Brazilian institutions in Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Ribeirão Preto that focuses on large-scale NIH-funded studies of HIV treatment and prevention. She also conducts studies in Mozambique with the nonprofit organization Drugs Resources Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition (DREAM). An initiative staffed by about 100 Italian medical professionals of the Catholic Community of Sant’Egidio, DREAM is a health care delivery program that takes care of 200,000 people with HIV/AIDS at 33 centers in 10 African countries.
Today, Nielsen is building bridges among all of these worlds by helping lead efforts, through the Center for Brazilian Studies, to improve education and research opportunities for Brazilian students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. The Center is working in collaboration with a student exchange program, Ciência Sem Fronteiras (Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program) funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology. The program provides scholarships to 100,000 Brazilian undergraduate and graduate students in STEM fields to study at universities around the world — including UCLA — for one to four years. While most students then return to their home universities to complete their degrees, some will earn their doctorates before returning to Brazil.
For Brazilian students, who can attend highly competitive universities in their country tuition-free, international education isn’t always financially feasible.
"Ciências Cem Fronteiras is opening opportunities for a lot of Brazilian students who otherwise might not be able to come to [the United States] because they don’t have the resources," said Nielsen. "It’s making international education available to everyone." 
Undergraduate students who come to UCLA through the program are taken under the wing of UCLA Extension, which enrolls them in appropriate areas of study and helps them find housing and connect with other resources. The courses they take are offered through UCLA Extension and UCLA’s professional schools, and they are assigned a faculty mentor with whom they conduct research. Ph.D. students are enrolled in UCLA doctoral programs.
Shown during clinical rounds recently at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center are (from left) Livia Prearo, pediatric infectious diseases fellow Kevin Quinn, Dr. Nielsen and Camila Correa. Prearo and Correa are medical students in the Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program.
Finding courses that fit the Brazilian undergraduates’ academic profiles can be a challenge, said Nielsen. In Brazil, she explained, students planning on becoming doctors, dentists, pharmacists or practitioners in other medical fields enroll in a six-year undergraduate program in that country. But in the United States, training in these fields comes at the graduate level in professional schools like the UCLA’s Geffen school and the School of Dentistry.
"I’ve been helping with the medical school part of the program," said Nielsen. "We’ve been trying to develop a way in which Brazilian medical students [undergraduates in Brazil] can also have the opportunity to experience our medical school, as they don’t want to be divorced from medicine for a whole year.
"So they will take a lot of biology, public health and health economics courses — courses that they wouldn’t take at their home universities — for nine months. And then they will have a 12-week experience in our medical school, following our faculty and participating in rounds."
Providing additional support for the students is the Consulate General of Brazil in Los Angeles.
"They actually have a person designated at each consulate to deal with Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program issues and to take care of the students," said Nielsen.
This fall, the consulate will join the UCLA Center for Brazilian Studies in sponsoring a campus event to welcome more than 150 Brazilian students coming to study at UCLA and other colleges and universities in Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii.
Also participating in the event will be representatives of the Lemann Foundation, which both supports the Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program and provides scholarships to Brazilian students at UCLA through the Jorge Paulo Lemann Scholarship and Fellowship Program. Nielsen also oversees this program, which was established at the Center for Brazilian Studies in 2010 with a gift from Brazilian businessman Jorge Paulo Lemann, a philanthropist who seeks to improve Brazilian education to promote social transformation. The scholarships and fellowships pay tuition costs for outstanding Brazilian students to attend UCLA in any discipline for up to two years. American students may also receive short-term fellowships to study in Brazil in established non-degree programs.
For Nielsen, working with Brazil is anything but new. "Ever since I’ve been at UCLA, I’ve worked extensively with colleagues in Brazil, so I go back and forth," she said. "I’m familiar with the Brazilian research system — and certainly with the medical schools in Brazil — I know how they operate, what courses people take, what are the expectations of their students."
What is new is this flourishing of fresh connections between her place of birth and her home at UCLA. Said Nielsen: "It’s an exciting time for the Center for Brazilian Studies and the Latin American Institute," both of which focus attention on international collaborations. "We have a lot of opportunities that we haven’t had before."
