Hello all! My name is Jerome (he/him/his) and I’m a rising senior majoring in allied health sciences with a concentration in public health and health promotion, and minoring in global studies with a concentration in global health. On campus, I am a member of the taekwondo club, competing in various tournaments against other colleges and universities across America. I am also an executive board member of the Rowe Scholars Program, and part of the honors community.

I have been involved in undergraduate research since my freshman year including various individual research papers as honors conversion projects. However, my most notable projects were the Holster Scholarship in my freshman year, presenting research on health disparities at the 18^th Global Health and Innovation Conference at Yale, and for the past 7 months, I have been a research assistant for Dr. Roman Shrestha on his mobile-based HIV prevention project in Malaysia. In this role, I developed research-informed HIV prevention contents and evaluated various features of the mobile app, which helped me realize that HIV stigma is one of the most persevering barriers to effective HIV/AIDS services in Malaysia. My UConn IDEA Grant project is focused on this area of research where I examine the roles of various forms of HIV stigma, in addition to prejudice and discrimination, in Malaysian MSM in accessing and obtaining HIV testing, PrEP update and PrEP adherence.