Case Summary:

A research assistant in biomedical science from Bangladesh wanted us to work with her to get an NIW (National Interest Waiver) approval. Her research was aimed at advancing the field’s understanding of the mechanisms behind common, and often deadly, diseases. For example, cholera is a disease prevalent throughout low-income countries that can kill within hours if left untreated. Thus her proposed endeavor also had broad and immediate implications for the United States since, in the last year and a half, nothing has had as great an impact on public health in America as COVID-19. So far, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed more than 800,000 American lives and added trillions of dollars to the national debt, placing significant financial burdens on American households and the government alike.

This is why one of her 4 recommenders said the following about her work:

“[The client] through her groundbreaking research, has characterized the complex factors involved in antibiotic production and resistance. In doing so, she has pioneered major progress in scientific knowledge of bacterial infection, thereby accelerating the development of novel, therapeutically effective antibiotics that mitigate the threat of antibiotic resistance. [The client’s] research is clearly essential for the wellbeing of individuals around the world.”

On the other hand, due to its clear national importance, her work has also found financial support with multiple instances of funding from various National Institutes of Health (NIH) agencies, including the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the National Cancer Institute. This further helped prove the worth of her work for the country and the world.

“Salmonella infections represent a critical threat to public health in the United States. [The client] has acknowledged this threat and made several crucial advancements toward mitigating the dangers of Salmonella infections in the US. Specifically, she has uncovered new knowledge about the interaction of Salmonella with human physiology pathways are activated in the body upon infection, as well as how the body works to counteract and control the spread of the infection. In the process, [the client] has spearheaded efforts to more deeply characterize how the body senses and responds to Salmonella, accelerating the creation and optimization of therapeutics with unprecedented levels of precision and efficiency. In the last analysis, [the client’s] work is clearly indispensable as the U.S. looks to minimize the prevalence and mortality of Salmonella infections.”

At the same time, her academic work has yielded 9 peer-reviewed journal articles (4 of them first-authored) which have been cited a total of 300 times according to Google Scholar, thereby demonstrating that these publications are widely recognized and relied upon in the field of biomedical science. She has conducted several projects in her 9 years of work in the area, of which we used detailed descriptions of 4 of the key projects as evidence of her contributions to and expertise in the field of biomedical science.

This helped along the adjudication process immensely and won her the NIW approval and hence the labor certification waiver in just 3 months and 19 days. We are proud of having helped her and we wish her all the best.