Alumna Honored by Leading Thai University.

Alumna Linda Cottler (’80) was awarded an honorary doctoral degree in public health from Thailand’s leading research university, Chulalongkorn University.

Thailand’s Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn presided at the October 20 ceremony at Chulalongkorn’s campus in Bangkok. The university’s president, Bundhit Eua-arporn, cited Cottler’s expertise and achievements in public health, calling her a role model and a standard for others to follow.

I am so proud and honored to receive this degree for my work in public health,” Cottler says. “I am also so excited to be working with these wonderful people from Thailand on issues of most concern to the Thai people.”

Cottler is a professor and chair of the University of Florida Department of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health and Health Professions and the College of Medicine. She also serves as the school’s associate dean for research and the founding director of the community engagement program HealthStreet, which works to reduce disparities in health care and improve access to research studies.

In her research around the world, Cottler has focused on underrepresented populations. Her studies, which have been funded by the National Institutes of Health continuously since 1989, include the development of culturally reliable and valid measures for identifying substance use and psychiatric disorders and their risk factors, innovative methods for conducting national surveys of high-risk behavior, and community-based interventions to reduce HIV risk behaviors and addiction.

Cottler began working with Chulalongkorn University in 2005, when she was a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis. She served as Washington University’s ambassador to the president of Chulalongkorn to recruit scholars, and has continued to work with Chulalongkorn after joining the University of Florida, where she has facilitated an exchange of students and faculty.

—Michelle Samuels