Camila Gelpí-Acosta received her PhD from the New School for Social Research in 2013. Since 2008, she has been engaged in drug use and HIV research in New York City and in Puerto Rico. As the Project Director for the CDC’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) study in NYC from 2008 to 2011, she conducted multiple ethnographies with people at high risk for HIV, including migrant Puerto Rican people who inject drugs. From 2013-2014, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Behavioral Scientist Training program (NIDA T32 DA007233), where she received comprehensive support and mentorship for research proposal development. She is a native Puerto Rican who co-founded a syringe exchange program in Puerto Rico (El Punto en la Montaña, Inc.), and is a consultant of a NIDA R01 study (PI Dombrowski, R01DA037117) in rural Puerto Rico. In September 2014, she was appointed as Assistant Professor at LaGuardia College in the Criminal Justice Program.
