Holly Burrows Journey From SMLS to Global Health

Holly started at SMLS in SK. She moved away for Grades three and four, but returned when her family came back to Oakville, and graduated in 2013. After graduating from SMLS, Holly went on to Queen’s University. She started in nursing, but then switched to the life sciences programme and graduated in 2018. While preparing for her GRE, Holly spent a year working in Tanzania as an administrator in a public health clinic.  

In the Fall of 2019, Holly began work on her master's degree in infectious disease and epidemiology at Yale University in Connecticut. So when the early warning signs about a novel coronavirus virus started circulating, she was already immersed in the world of viruses. When a team from the Chinese embassy came to share experience and expertise with Yale faculty, she got to learn from them first hand. Despite her front-row seat, Holly was subjected to the same lockdown restrictions as the rest of us, and spent the spring back in Oakville with her parents.  

For the next two semesters, most of her (online) class work became COVID-related projects. As Holly puts it: “My whole education became oriented around learning from COVID as almost all the faculty were involved in some way. If we were learning modeling? [We’d] make a COVID model. Learning vaccine policy? [We’d] have (zoom) class guests from state health departments and vaccine rollout commissions. Learning about the social determinants of health? [We’d] talk to the people researching the disproportionate effects of COVID on communities of colour”.  

Despite the worldwide attention on COVID, Holly describes her shift to the study of typhoid in her second year as far more interesting. “The explicit goal of those projects was to inform policy-makers in particular countries and the WHO or GAVI (global vaccine alliance). At the time I worked for her, my advisor (boss, to the non-academics!) sat on multiple vaccine advisory committees for these organizations.”

In August 2022, Holly began work on her PhD in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary biology at Princeton University. Her focus is on modelling how infectious diseases spread, particularly dengue fever. She has been working with an NIH team in Cambodia, studying vaccine impacts and how the dengue ecology works in the body. Her research has taken her to Cambodia, Kenya, and Madagascar. Holly plans to defend her PhD thesis in mid to late 2027.

When Holly reflects on how SMLS shaped her path, she points to her Global Studies trip to Ecuador, her Grade 11 work placement at Mount Sinai hospital, and her Duke of Edinburgh adventure trips (Holly achieved her Gold Award). She also treasures other Millie memories: the friends she made on the soccer team, playing clarinet in the band, and especially the production of Les Miserables. Thirteen years on, several of Holly’s soccer teammates are still part of her friend group.