Research Scientist Profile
NAME: JOSEPH ALWYN VALU
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND: After the high school certification exam (Cambridge University overseas)from St. Mary's Anglo-Indian High, Bombay, and a B.Sc. Honors degree from Bombay University's St. Xavier's College in Microbiology/Chemistry, I accepted academic scholarships and worked my way to an M.S. in microbial genetics at Arizona State. I have also done graduate research and studies at Marquette, and taken post grad courses at Washington and St. Louis universities.
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS: My research contributions are as follows:.
Research Scientist & Chairman, HIV/AIDS Confidentiality & Security Committee, Bureau of Laboratories, New York City Dept. of Health. Retd.:
Detected a statistical flip-flop phenomenon in the incidence of Shigellosis, a dysentery infection which may also be sexually transmissible, vis-a-vis high incidences amongst adult males, but not amongst adult females, living in the areas of known homosexual enclaves of the City, and proposed the testing of adult males who develop shigellosis for HIV testing as the disease may early indicate a possible risk factor for the longer incubating HIV/AIDS.
Research Scientist & Chief, STD Laboratories Unit: N. Y. City Dept. of Health:
Developed the Rapid Tzanck staining technique for the diagnosis of genital herpes.
Method was included in STD bureau tests by medical director after a double blind study.
Turn around time reduced from 40 minutes for the original test to 10 minutes.
In association with a colleague at the National Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, showed that Haemophilus ducreyi, the etiologic agent for the ulcerative STD, Chancroid, was optimally grown at 33 degrees Centigrade, which increased the diagnostic rate by over 20 %.
Chief Microbiologist/ Akro-Medic Engineering: assisted in the development of the RSBA, (prototype Abbott MS2) for rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing, the world’s first fully automated bacteriological analyzer.
Adapted the RSBA (Rapid Sequential Bacteriological Analyzer) for the assay of vitamins, the determination of bacterial load in food ingredients, and the diagnosis of urinary tract infections, as well as proposed the inclusion of an indicator for the automated identification of pathogenic enterobacteria.
Group Leader/ Microbiological Research, Vestal Laboratories, Div. of W. R. Grace: in the development of One-Stroke Vesphene, the world’s first hard-water disinfectant: tuberculocide, bactericide and fungicide used extensively by the U.S. Navy.
Research Microbiologist/ Scientific Associates: discovered a new biochemical characteristic of Enterobacteriaceae, and devised the chemically defined Cystine Carbon Medium to detect it.
National Institutes of Health Scholar/ Arizona State University: Devised and developed the “EDTA-Gradient Plate Technique” for the electron microscopic study of a marine vibrios’ cell wall.
Public Health Microbiologist/ Marin County Health Dept. Devised and developed a simple diagnostic method “disc plate technique’ for the rapid diagnosis of gonorrhea and meningococcal meningitis.
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