Assistant Professor
Division of Infectious Diseases
Natalie Bowman is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a North Carolina native, having grown up in Greensboro. She received her AB in Chemistry from Harvard College, followed by an MPhil in Biochemistry at Cambridge University, UK, where she worked in Professor Peter Leadlay’s lab studying the biosynthesis of polyketide antibiotics such as erythromycin. She went on to attend medical school at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.
During medical school, she studied the epidemiology of Chagas disease in periurban neighborhoods of Arequipa, Peru as a Fogarty/Ellison fellow. The work characterized the epidemiology of the causative parasite Trypanosoma cruzi and its insect vector Triatoma infestans, and it explored early signs of cardiac or autonomic dysfunction in infected children. This research was done under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Gilman (Johns Hopkins) and Dr. Caryn Bern (UCSF), with whom she maintains productive collaborations. After graduating from medical school in 2007, Dr. Bowman completed her residency in internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital then returned to her home state for fellowship in infectious diseases at UNC. During fellowship she obtained an MPH in Epidemiology and performed research on the epidemiology of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in Africa under the mentorship of Dr. Steven Meshnick and Dr. Jonathan Juliano.
In 2014, Dr. Bowman was promoted to Assistant Professor. She is broadly interested in the epidemiology and pathogenesis of parasites and neglected tropical diseases, especially those that are prevalent in the Americas. She has ongoing studies throughout Latin America investigating HIV and parasitic coinfections; Chagas disease and toxoplasmosis; viral gastroenteritis in young children; and the epidemiology, transmission, and prevention of Zika virus. In addition to her collaborations in South America, works in Nicaragua with Dr. Sylvia Becker-Dreps (UNC Family Medicine) and Filemon Bucardo (UNAN-León).
