Success Story: North America Immigration Law Group Supports NIW Approval for Research on Emerging Infectious Diseases
Client’s Testimonial:
"Thank you very much for your email and for all of your support throughout my I-140 NIW process. I truly appreciate your team's professionalism and guidance, and I am very happy with the successful outcome."
On July 9th, 2026, we received another EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) approval for a Graduate Research Assistant in the Field of Computational Biology (Approval Notice).
General Field: Computational Biology
Position at the Time of Case Filing: Graduate Research Assistant
Country of Origin: Bangladesh
State of Residence at the Time of Filing: Indiana
Approval Notice Date: July 9th, 2026
Processing Time: 8 months, 16 days (Premium Processing Requested)
Case Summary:
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that responding to an infectious disease outbreak requires more than vaccines and medicines; it also requires the ability to rapidly analyze enormous amounts of biological data. Recognizing this challenge, the client devoted research efforts to developing artificial intelligence-driven bioinformatics and systems biology tools that identified disease mechanisms, predicted drug targets, and improved therapeutic discovery. At the time of filing, the client was working as a graduate research assistant while continuing to expand these computational approaches.
When preparing the NIW petition, North America Immigration Law Group (Chen Immigration Law Associates) focused on a simple question: How could artificial intelligence help scientists respond more quickly to future public health emergencies? We demonstrated that the client's research was designed to answer that question by integrating machine learning, systems biology, and bioinformatics into scalable discovery platforms. These technologies could identify antimicrobial resistance genes, uncover molecular pathways responsible for disease, and accelerate the search for new therapeutics before outbreaks became more difficult to control.
Equally important was showing that the client had already established a meaningful record of achievement in this area. The petition highlighted:
- An M.S. in Biology
- 14 peer-reviewed journal articles, 2 peer-reviewed conference papers, and 1 first-authored conference abstract
- 271 citations
The evidence also showed that the client's research was already extending beyond the original publications. Other investigators built upon the client's computational pipelines to study COVID-19 immune responses, investigate treatments for long COVID, and develop artificial intelligence models capable of improving colorectal cancer diagnosis. This pattern of independent reliance demonstrated that the client's methods had become practical resources for researchers addressing diverse biomedical challenges rather than remaining isolated academic studies.
Two recommendation letters reinforced these contributions. As one recommender observed, "[Client], through this work, has vastly improved COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment and has yielded important insights to treat these conditions with greater accuracy going forward."
Following a Premium Processing upgrade submitted on May 15th, 2026, USCIS approved the petition. We are proud that our firm could help present the client's research as a forward-looking effort to strengthen public health resilience through artificial intelligence and computational biology.