During her tenure, she averaged 3.5 points in 46 games, and also played varsity tennis and served as team captain during her final year.
[5] She returned to school to complete her PhD and continued her training as a postdoctoral fellow in interdisciplinary programs in health and cancer biology at the Harvard T.H.
"[6] Following her fellowship, Overbaugh joined the University of Washington (UW) to expand their HIV research program to include a basic science focus.
[9][10] Overbaugh left the UW in 1999 to join the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where she continued and expanded her studies of HIV transmission and pathogenesis, including working closely with the Kenya research collaborative team.. That year Overbaugh received an Elizabeth Glaser Scientist award to expand her studies of mother-infant transmission of HIV to better understand how features of the virus and immune response impact infant infection risk.
[17] Overbaugh's research has also focused on understanding how viral evolution impacts disease and she showed that the viruses that evolve over the course of infection are more pathogenic, in part because they have escaped neutralizing antibody control.
[45][46] Due to her interest in infectious disease of global health importance, Overbaugh also emphasized the development of methods for detecting infections in her work.
[5] Two years later, she was recognized for her long service to the global fight against HIV with the Field's Memorial Lecture at the opening session of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.
[54] As a result of her studies of HIV transmission and pathogenesis in affected cohorts, including African women and children, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Her former trainees have taken faculty positions at Baylor, Columbia, Emory, Harvard, Stanford U Michigan, U Washington, and other Universities focused on research and/or teaching.
[59] There she highlighted “there must be room for those who want that balance, otherwise creative people with the potential to make significant contributions to scientific discovery will be excluded”.
[60][61] She also lectures on the practice peer-review in ethics forums having served as Chair of NIH grant review panels and as Journal editor.
Overbaugh was the founding faculty lead for Hutch United,[62] a grass roots effort established in 2013 and led by trainees to help promote the success of underrepresented groups in science and those who otherwise felt on the fringes.
Her citation for the Nature Mentorship Award calls out her strengths mentoring African scientists: "She has the patience to listen to and deal with culture shocks and adjustment to new surroundings and a different system of training and education.
"[66] Overbaugh's place as a role model and mentor for underrepresented groups in science has been recognized in multiple other ways including by the University of Washington School of Medicine in 2007.
In that lecture, Overbaugh highlighted her collaborative and bilateral research with Kenyan partners and emphasized her view of the importance of supporting training of aspiring African scientists.
In 1994, as a junior faculty member at UW, Overbaugh was selected to present the New Investigator lecture to the University of Medical School.
[73] Resignation from leadership: In early 2022, Overbaugh was placed on administrative leave from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in order to conduct an independent external investigation.
[74][75] The investigation was prompted by an anonymous complaint regarding a Cancer Research Center Halloween Party in 2009 where she was asked to dress as Michael Jackson as part of a group "Thriller" costume and darkened her face for this role.
[74] This was determined to be an isolated incident, and an interview of her peers and coworkers failed to reveal any pattern of inappropriate behavior of any kind in the past or at any time while employed at Fred Hutch in her twenty-three year tenure.
“She will continue to be a prominent investigator at the Fred Hutch in the Human Biology Division working on viruses that affect so many people around the world”.