“When future generations ask what I did to stop the AIDS epidemic, I want to have an answer,” said Ed Pettitt ’05. Over the years, that answer has grown into a list.

At Cornell, Ed led an awareness campaign for rural youth around Ithaca, New York, and volunteered to conduct HIV tests at the university’s health center. Graduating from the College of Human Ecology, he joined the Peace Corps to implement HIV/AIDS interventions in a remote village in Botswana.

Stationed in the African nation, Ed has been working as senior project coordinator for Baylor College of Medicine’s International Pediatric AIDS Initiative at Texas Children’s Hospital since 2011. He coordinates projects related to adolescent HIV care and cutting-edge pediatric HIV genomics research.

With support from the Wellcome Trust, he’s spearheading creative approaches to educating Botswanan communities about genomics, joining forces with local artists and scientists to make informative and fun-to-read comics.