Every year, tuberculosis claims more than a million lives. Sraoshi Barua joined the fight against one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases as a UC Irvine graduate student researcher — without ever stepping inside a lab.
For her practicum, Barua worked remotely with a UC Irvine and UC San Francisco team studying ways to advance TB diagnostic testing. Their findings could soon influence World Health Organization guidelines — improving how the disease is detected and expediting treatment worldwide.
“It is meaningful that my work could help close the diagnostic gap in TB at the international level,” said Barua, who earned her Master of Public Health from UC Irvine Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health in June of 2025. “I’m surprised it could affect people’s lives so quickly.”
The practicum is the capstone experience for Wen Public Health students, combining coursework with hands-on training. With more than 140 partner sites — clinics, nonprofits, government agencies, and research labs — the program helps students build professional skills, expand networks, and prepare for careers in the field.
Barua’s journey shows how far that experience can reach. What began as a summer internship — and later became her MPH practicum — has evolved into research with global implications. Working with her mentors, she studied sputum samples, the mucus coughed up from the lungs and used in TB tests, to evaluate the accuracy of rapid diagnostics. The team’s findings, now under review by the World Health Organization, support testing even lower-quality samples so that more patients can be diagnosed earlier and start treatment sooner.
“What’s remarkable about Sraoshi’s story is the quality of her work and the scale of its impact,” said Nichole Quick, MPH, MD, director of practice for the MPH degree program. “She turned a student project into research with the potential to influence global health policy, and that’s exactly the kind of initiative we hope to inspire.”
Barua traces her interest in public health to her undergraduate years, when courses in immunology and cancer biology first introduced her to the field of epidemiology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she volunteered as a health screener — an experience that underscored for her the importance of timely information and community outreach. Those moments, she said, convinced her that she wanted to pursue a career that combined science with public impact.
She found that opportunity in tuberculosis research. With the UCI/UCSF team, she evaluated the effectiveness of the Xpert MTB/RIF assay, a rapid molecular test for TB. The test can detect tuberculosis and resistance to rifampin, a first-line treatment drug, in under two hours — compared with traditional cultures, which can take weeks.
But there’s a challenge: the test relies on sputum samples, and collecting a good sample isn’t always possible. Children, people living with HIV, and patients with mild symptoms often struggle to produce enough sputum. Even when samples are obtained, many are judged “low quality” and discarded. That can delay diagnosis and treatment.
Barua’s team wanted to know if those discarded samples still had value. By comparing results across a wide range of samples, they found that even low-quality specimens could yield reliable diagnostic information. Their recommendation — that all samples should be tested, regardless of quality — is now being considered by the World Health Organization. If adopted, the change could expand access to faster diagnosis and treatment for patients worldwide.
“It was meaningful to be part of every stage, from brainstorming the research question to developing the analysis plan and writing the manuscript,” Barua said. She presented the team’s work at UC Irvine’s Scholar’s Day and the MPH Poster Symposium, and she continues to contribute to the project after graduation.
Barua’s advice to current students is simple: Take the leap. Reach out to faculty or researchers, explore opportunities early, and don’t be afraid to test yourself in new settings.
“Getting experience in both research and community work helps you figure out where you want to go,” she said.
