The Initiative to Develop African Research Leaders (IDeAL) is a high-quality training programme designed to develop outstanding young African scientists into world-class research leaders. It is hosted by KEMRI – Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya. IDeAL is available to young researchers, from Undergraduate Research Attachments to Postdoctoral Fellowships, with the aim of keeping scientists at African institutions through a defined programme of recruitment, supervision and mentorship with the goal of establishing unique career paths for all students and fellows.

IDeAL is one of the 11 initiatives under DELTAS Africa (Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science in Africa) funded by the African Academy of Sciences (AAS)’s and Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) and supported by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development Planning and Coordinating Agency (NEPAD Agency) with funding from the Wellcome Trust and the United Kingdom government.

IDeAL Team comprises over 200 persons including postdoctoral fellows, students, interns, mentors, supervisors, and the secretariat.

For more details on the schemes supported under IDeAL, visit the Programmes Page.

IDeAL builds on previous capacity strengthening activities at the KEMRI – Wellcome Trust Research Programme. As illustrated in figure below capacity building at the Programme has gone through different phases. During the earliest phase, 1989-2008, the emphasis was on building core structures to support research and training including high quality laboratory, clinical, field and ICT infrastructure. As these core structures expanded there was a gradual increase in the number of local researchers training at Masters and PhD levels, albeit on an ad hoc basis.  It eventually became clear that there was need to develop a coherent framework to manage and scale up research training activities at the Programme. This was achieved through the awarding of a Strategic Award amounting to 12 Million Pounds by the Wellcome Trust. The award supported research training activities from 2008 to 2015.

As a result of the Award capacity building activities in the Programme  expanded markedly. In addition, the award facilitated the centralisation and harmonization of capacity building management by providing a secure financial base that enabled long term planning of career paths.

In brief, between 2008 and 2015, 52 students were support to undertake PhDs and also received a further one year Postdoctoral support. 32 of these are Postdoctoral Reseachers at KWTRP and elsewhere while 8 are lecturers in local Universities. 5 have already received Wellcome Trust Training Fellowships.  88 people were supported for Masters training either directly or through support leading to the successful application for external Masters Fellowships (e.g. the Wellcome Trust Masters Fellowship). We have provided internships to  172 recent Kenyan graduates. Over 30 of who have now progressed through the research training to Postdoctoral level. Majority of the rest are either research assistants or Masters students elsewhere.

Importantly, work supported by the SA has contributed to development of a number of health policies and practice guidelines  in Kenya and Globally particularly for prevention and treatment of early childhood illnesses. In addition, it has been presented in over 200 conferences and resulted in over 300 peer-reviewed publications (>150 first author papers – >50  in journals with an Impact Factor of >4,  and > 150 non-first author papers – >30  in journals with an Impact Factor of >4.

Vision

African-led research solving African and global health issues

Mission

To generate a critical mass of African Research Leaders

Objective

Attract – To attract young African to research

Train – To provide high quality research training

Retain – To support the retention of African researchers in the Continent

Nurture – To nurture emerging African research leaders

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Prof. George Warimwe

Past Students

Peter Muthama -


Affiliations:

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust 

The Jenner Institute, Oxford University

Dr. Sam Akech

Current Students

Past Students

Sylvia Omoke -


Affiliation(s):

Initiative to Develop African Research Leaders, KEMRI – Wellcome Trust, Kenya

Sam Akech is paediatrician with Dphil in Clinical Medicine from the University of Oxford, UK. He was initially based at the Kilifi site where he did studies leading to his PhD. He investigated haemodynamic status of children with severe febrile illnesses and conducted a number of clinical trials comparing different fluid regimes for treatment of shock in that population of children. He is currently a post-doctoral research fellow investigating risk factors for mortality and morbidity of common childhood conditions, guidance compliance and outcomes spanning hospitals (clusters) within Clinical Information Network. He aims inform case management of these conditions with high mortality, including triage, and identify outstanding questions that require pragmatic trials.

Dr. Charles Agoti

Current Students

David Collins -

Martha Luka -

Past Students

John Mwita -

Sylvia Onchaga -

Timothy Makori -

Andrew Egesa -

Arnold Wasike -

Peter Muthama -

Robert Mugo -

Festus Nyasimi -

Nickson Murunga -


Dr Charles Agoti is a Mid Career Research Fellow (MCRF) under the IDeAL Programme. Prior receiving the fellowship Charles was working as Postdoctoral Bioinformacian with the Virus Epidemiology and Control (VEC) group within the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Kilifi Programme. For more than 10 years,

Charles’ primary focus was generating and analyzing respiratory virus genomes to improve understanding on the underlying transmission and evolutionary patterns that allow persistence of these pathogens in host populations. Charles has made significant contributions into the understanding of the nature and variant composition of local seasonal respiratory syncytial virus (RSV, a leading cause of childhood pneumonia) epidemics and the role of genetic variation in RSV repeat infections.

The IDeAL MCRF supports Charles to extend this transmission genomics work to medically important enteric viruses. Specifically, Charles will be investigating viral diarrhea genomics pre and post-rotavirus vaccination in Kenya to understand virus source, transmission patterns and vaccine impact.

Prof. Faith Osier

Current Students

Karamoko Niare -

Rodney Ogwang -

Patience Kiyuka -

Akua Botwe -

Kennedy Mwai -

Past Students

Faith Marura -

Chadwick Henry -


Affiliations:

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust

Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford University

UniversitatsKilinikum Heildeberg

Faith trained as a clinician at the University of Nairobi, Kenya and obtained her MBChB degree in 1996. She immediately took up her Medical Internship at Coast General Provincial Hospital, in Kenya where she also worked as a Medical Officer in the department of Medicine until March 1998. Thereafter she took up a post as a Medical Officer/Research Officer at KEMRI-Kilifi, working in the Paediatrics Department of Kilifi District Hospital. It was here that she began to develop a career in research, engaging in clinical research studies and actively taking part in institutional academic meetings including weekly journal clubs and seminars. She subsequently specialized in Paediatrics, training both in Kenya and the United Kingdom, becoming a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health UK in 2003 and a Consultant Paediatrician in Kenya in 2009. In 2004 she undertook a Masters in Human Immunity at the University of Liverpool, UK where she graduated with distinction, and was awarded a prize for being the best student of the year in the Department of Immunology. She has a PhD from the Open University, UK and currently works as a Clinical Research Fellow and Group Leader at the KEMRI-CGMR-C in Kilifi. She holds an Intermediate Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine from the Wellcome Trust, UK, and the prestigious MRC/DfID African Research Leader Award. In 2014 she was awarded the Young African Scientist Award by EVIMalaR, won the Merle A Sande Health Leadership Award and the Royal Society Pfizer Award. She is actively involved in capacity building for African Scientists and is building up a dynamic research group in Kilifi. Faith has been recently appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford

Dr. Sandra Chaves

Current Students

David Collins -

Past Students


Currently Dr. Chaves is the Influenza Program Director at the CDC Kenya office.
Dr. Chaves completed her medical degree in Brazil followed by several years of clinical practice in tropical countries, working with a broad spectrum of infectious diseases. In 1997, Dr. Chaves completed a Master of Science in Communicable Disease Epidemiology degree program from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, working as a medical epidemiologist in various settings afterwards, including Bolivia, Brazil, East Timor and The Netherlands, both at local and national levels, through which she has acquired extensive practical experience in public health.

In 2002, Dr. Chaves joined the CDC, and has since worked with viral vaccine preventable diseases (varicella and zoster viruses, viral hepatitis and more recently influenza), investigating issues related to long-term vaccine-induced immunity and disease severity. Dr. Chaves joined the Influenza Division, in the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in 2009 and moved to Kenya in 2015. As the Influenza Program Director in Kenya, she oversees a large research portfolio as well as programmatic activities implemented in collaboration with the Kenyan Ministry of Health. She has been the author or co-author of more than 80 papers and book chapters.

Dr. James Tuju

Current Students

Lilian Walala -

Past Students

Brenda Oseno -

Faith Marura -

Chadwick Henry -

Timothy Chege -


Prof. Mike English

Current Students

Dr. Michuki Maina, MBChB -

Dr. Jacquie Narosto Oliwa, MBChB -

Paul Ouma -

Past Students

Sylvia Omoke -

Timothy Chege -


Affiliations:

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust

Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford University

Mike worked in Kilifi from 1992 on malaria, in the early years of the ‘Kilifi’ programme, and returned to the UK in 1996 to complete specialist training as a General Paediatrician in 1998. He returned to Kilifi in 1999 to rejoin the programme and work on neonatal illnesses as part of a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship while also working as a paediatrician in Kilifi District Hospital. In 2004 after some work at more national level on quality of paediatric care he moved to Nairobi where he continues to work with the programme as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. He was made Professor of International Child Health in Oxford in 2010. His work has included developing national, evidence-based guidelines for care of severely ill children and newborns, at first in 2005 and then updated in 2010 andArray 2013. To complement these Mike and colleagues developed the ETAT+ course, adapting WHO’s ETAT course and expanding its scope to include evidence-based case management of serious illness in the child and newborn periods. The ETAT+ course is now provided with the help of multiple colleagues and the Kenya Paediatric Association with training conducted across Kenya and for Kenyan medical students. Others have taken the course to Rwanda, Uganda and Somaliland. More information on this course and the approach to developing national guidelines can be found at www.idoc-africa.org. The Health Services Unit he leads has undertaken long-term studies by a multidisciplinary team on initiating and establishing ‘best-practices’ within rural government hospitals. This has resulted in a Kenyan team working with the support of international collaborators on hospital performance measurement, cost-effectiveness, motivation, task-shifting, and barriers to implementation. More recently work has started on governance, leadership, human resources for health and knowledge translation. The group are well known for their work on measuring and testing interventions to improve paediatric and neonatal quality of care. Mike and the group work closely with the Kenyan Ministry of Health and he provides technical advice to WHO on a range of issues related to child and newborn survival.

Dr Daniel Kiboi

Current Students

Past Students

Peter Nduta -


Affiliations:

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust

WACCBIP

Daniel studied Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at JKUAT, Kenya. His postgraduate research focused on selecting and identifying molecular markers associated with antimalarial drugs piperaquine and lumefantrine resistance in rodent malaria parasites Plasmodium berghei. His study mapped promising mutations in proteins that are highly plausible candidates for mediators of drug action/resistance. During his PhD training, he visited Drs Oliver and Julian lab at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He trained on transfection work using gene knockout and epitope tagging, PlasmoGEM vectors for P. berghei and their application in validating resistance markers/drug transporters/targets. He later established and continued with the P. berghei transfection in KEMRI, Nairobi. Daniel joined the KEMRI-WTRP, Kilifi in 2016 as PostDoc under the WACCBIP Programme. His expanded focus is validating Plasmodium proteins associated not only with drug resistance but also to genes of interest in malaria immunity using both PlasmoGEM resources and CRISPR/Cas9 system.

Prof. Kathryn Maitland, FMedSc

Current Students

Dr. Obonyo Nchafatso, MBChB -

Past Students


Professor of Paediatric Tropical Infectious Diseases at the Faculty of Medicine and Director of the ICCARE Centre at the Global Centre of Health Innovation, Imperial College, London and an Honorary Fellow at MRC Clinical Trials Unit, University College, London. Over the last 17 years she has been based full-time at the East Africa, where she leads a research group whose major research portfolio includes severe malaria, bacterial sepsis and severe malnutrition in children and clinical trials in emergency care. Her team conducted the largest trial in critically children ever undertaken in Africa (FEAST trial) examining fluid resuscitation strategies in children with severe febrile illness, showing that fluid boluses increased mortality compared to no-bolus (control) (Maitland et al, NEJM 2011). Her team is currently running two other large clinical trials investigating transfusion and other treatment strategies in 3950 African children with severe life-threatening anaemia (TRACT; Mpoya et al Trials 2016) and the optimum oxygen saturation threshold for which oxygen should be targeted and how best to administer oxygen in 4800 children (COAST: Children Oxygenation Administration Strategies Trial).

Dr. Andrew Blagborough

Current Students

Michelle Muthui -

Past Students


Affiliations:

Imperial College London, Department of Life Sciences

After obtaining his degree in Biochemistry and Applied Clinical Biochemistry from UMIST in 2001, Andrew completed a PhD in Molecular Parasitology from the University of Manchester, studying the folate biosynthetic pathway of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. In 2006 he joined the Sinden lab at Imperial College, London, to study the sexual stages of Plasmodium, with an emphasis on developing transmission-blocking interventions (TBIs) to target the parasite within the mosquito host, inhibiting or preventing the onward transmission of malaria.  He is currently a Principal Investigator in the DoLS, and his main interests focus on the identification of novel anti-malarial transmission blocking vaccine targets, vaccine delivery, the development of assays to examine TBI efficacy, and assessing the practical impact of introducing TBIs on populations of mosquitoes and vertebrate in both the laboratory and the field.

Prof. John Fraser

Current Students

Dr. Obonyo Nchafatso, MBChB -

Past Students


Professor Fraser received his basic training in medicine at The Uni of Glasgow, where he also received fellowships in medicine and anaesthesia during his basic ICU training. He completed his ICU training on the Brisbane scheme and subsequently completed a PhD on burns and smoke inhalation injury through the University of Queensland, resulting in multiple publications and an international patent.
Professor John Fraser is the Director of the Intensive Care Unit at St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital and is a pre-eminent intensivist at The Prince Charles Hospital, where he founded and leads the multi-disciplinary Critical Care Research Group, the largest group of its kind in Australasia.
This group has 7 purpose built labs, including molecular, medical engineering, ex vivo resuscitation of hearts and lungs and cell culture. Professor Fraser currently supervises over 20 PhD, MPhil and honours students in medicine, surgery, basic science, engineering and allied health fields. Since its inception in 2004, the group has earned more than $29M Australian in grants and industry funding. The group leads Australia in complex animal models of critical illness, including artificial heart and lung development; trauma and haemorrhage research, and has been awarded the Centre for Metabolomics for University of Queensland.
In 2014 Professor Fraser and his group were awarded The Centre for Research Excellence (one of only of six clinical CRE’s) in Australia, looking at the development and utilisation of bionic hearts and lungs. Collaborations extend across Australia, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa, where the group’s collaboration with Imperial College has been awarded with a $4.3 million grant to investigate respiratory support in under-resourced environments. Professor Fraser has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, and has 4 professorships in different universities.
As a part of the work undertaken by Professor Fraser through both the Critical Care Research Group and the Centre for Research Excellence, he has collaborated extensively at a local, state, national and international level. These collaborations have included:

• Queensland Health Service Hospitals,
• the Australian Red Cross Blood Service,
• University of Queensland,
• Queensland University of Technology,
• Griffith University,
• CSIRO,
• Intensive Care Research Austin Hospital, Melbourne,
• The O’Brien Institute, Melbourne
• Royal Adelaide Hospital,
• Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney,
• RMIT University, Melbourne,
• University of New South Wales,
• Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney,
• University of Western Australia, Perth,
• The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne,
• The Children’s Hospital, Sydney,
• Royal Perth Hospital,
• University of Ontario, Canada,
• Malmo University Hospital, Sweden,
• National Cardiovascular Centre Research Institute, Osaka, Japan,
• Rayne Institute, King’s College, London, United Kingdom,
• Xian Hospital, Xian, China,
• National Heart Hospital, Malaysia,
• Ibaraki University, Japan,
• PREVOR, France,
• University of Alabama at Birmingham,
• St Michael’s Hospital, Canda,
• University of Colorado, USA,
• Hemholtz Institute, RWTH Aachen University, Germany,
• Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, New Zealand,
• Aston University, United Kingdom,
• University of Texas, Medical Branch, USA, and
• Imperial College, London.

Overall track record (in the last 5 years):
Professor Fraser has had over 270 published papers (156 in the last five years), as well as presented over 140 keynote lectures and presentations around the world. He holds appointments at Monash University, Bond University, University of Queensland, Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology, as well as one of the six national reviewers of all research projects for FCICM, Senior Examiner to College of ICU Medicine. He is the Editor of Intensive Care Medicine experimental (ICMx), and an Editorial Board Member for the journal Burns. He is the Protocols and Research Chair of the Asia-Pacific Chapter Extracorporeal Life Support Organisation (APELSO) and the Conference Chair for the Chapter’s October 2017 Conference (to be held in Australia for the first time). He is also a member of the Executive Board of ‘A Brighter Future’ – a Cerebral Palsy charity.
In addition to the above, Professor Fraser continues his association with the Royal Children’s Hospital Burns Research Group which was initiated during his PhD including a continuation of smoke inhalation research.

Dr. George Githinji

Past Students

Doreen Kebande -

Jacqueline Wahura -

Kevin Oluoch -

Khadija Said -

Phoebe Matara -


I am an IDeAL early career postdoctoral fellow at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme. I utilise bioinformatics approaches to study virus evolution and transmission patterns during outbreaks. My current project investigates the role of minority variants in virus evolution and in reconstructing virus transmission chains.

I hold a bachelors degree in Biomedical Science and Technology from Egerton University and a PhD from the Open University (UK) advised by Dr Peter Bull (University of Cambridge), Prof Kevin Marsh (Oxford University) and Dr Britta Urban (University of Liverpool). My PhD thesis explored the extent of sequence and epitope diversity within a short region of the PfEMP1 molecule that is associated with characteristic expression patterns in severe and non-servere malaria cases.

Before joining the programme, I trained under Dr Patrick Duffy as a visiting student at the MoMs malaria project in Tanzania and SBRI (now Center for Infectious Disease Research) and attended bioinformatics courses at the University of Washington.

Dr. Patrick Munywoki

Current Students

Past Students

Roselyne Nguti -


I am a post-doctoral research scientist at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP), in Kilifi, Kenya. I joined the programme as a project assistant in November 2005 after completion of a BSc (Nursing Sciences) Degree in Moi University. My main roles were to support inpatient surveillance of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Since then I have been involved in a broad range of research activities, including the development of new research protocols and expansion of the inpatient surveillance to include other respiratory pathogens.

In 2008, I was awarded a Commonwealth MSc training scholarship, and completed the MSc in Public Health in Developing Countries at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom in October 2009, passing with a distinction. Upon my return, I initiated epidemiological studies to investigate the transmission patterns of a range of respiratory viruses in the community settings.

These studies formed part of my Ph.D training under the supervision of Professors D. James Nokes (affiliated to KWTRP, Kilifi, Kenya and University of Warwick, UK) and Graham F. Medley (University of Warwick, UK). I successfully defended my thesis ‘Transmission of Respiratory Syncytial Virus in Households: Who Acquires Infection from Whom’ at the Open University, UK in August 2013.

I am currently interested in unravelling transmission dynamics of a range of respiratory viruses in Kenya and identify potential control strategies.

Prof. Ifedayo Adetifa

Past Students

Caroline Mburu -


Affiliation(s):

KEMRI – Wellcome – Trust, Kenya 

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK

Ifedayo is a consultant pediatrician and infectious diseases epidemiologist. Prior to his arrival at the programme, he worked for a decade at the United Kingdom’s Medical Research Council Unit, The Gambia where he led clinical and field activities for the Tuberculosis (TB) epidemiology research including the TB case contact platform. His research interests there were delivery of TB diagnostics and care, assessment of novel diagnostics for TB infection and disease including biomarkers for disease and protection, and systematic reviews. In his last MRC role, he was the principal investigator on a £2.6million TB Epidemiology projects portfolio that included a nationwide TB prevalence survey and a community randomised trial to assess the impact of an enhanced TB case finding strategy on TB notification. He works full time at the Kilifi KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme on the Pneumococcal Vaccine Impact Study (PCVIS), and the Kilifi Vaccine Assessment Platform. He is also with the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. His current research interests are vaccine effectiveness studies, vaccine monitoring including issues of coverage, timeliness, and equity.

Prof. James Nokes

Current Students

David Collins -

Jacqueline Waeni -

Ivy Kombe -

Martha Luka -

Past Students

Carol Abidha -

John Mwita -

Andrew Egesa -

Jacqueline Wahura -

Arnold Wasike -

Dr. Janet Siele, BVM -

Roselyne Nguti -

Khadija Said -

Phoebe Matara -

Martha Luka -


James Nokes is Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick. Since 2001 he has been based full time at the Wellcome Trust Major Overseas Programme, Kilifi coastal Kenya. James trained in Zoology (BSc) followed by a PhD in virus epidemiology. His principle interests are the transmission dynamics and control of human viral pathogens, including respiratory syncytial virus and rotavirus. The focus of his WT Senior Investigator Award is the integration of epidemiological and genomic data to infer transmission pathways at different scales of interest from the household to countrywide. His research group is inter-disciplinary using molecular, phylogenetic, immunological, mathematical, statistical and field approaches to address key questions relating to respiratory and enteric virus persistence, transmission, and intervention.

Joyce Nyiro

Current Students

Past Students

Dr. Janet Siele, BVM -


Joyce is a Research Officer based at KEMRI – Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Kilifi.

Prof. Anthony Scott

Current Students

Dr. Esther Muthumbi, MBChB -

Dr. Juliet O. Awori, MBChB -

Past Students


Affiliation(s):

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford

Anthony Scott trained in clinical infectious diseases and in epidemiology before coming to work in Kilifi in 1993 as a Wellcome Trust Training Fellow. He started studying the aetiology and risk factors of pneumonia in adults and subsequently investigated natural immunity, diagnostics, host-susceptibility and transmission epidemiology of pneumococcal disease in children. In 2000, he set up the Kilifi Health and Demographic Surveillance System with Tom Williams. In 2004, Anthony initiated a regional network of surveillance for pneumococcal disease (netSPEAR) with Mike English. Currently, he is a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow and Professor of Vaccine Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Nancy Mwangome

Current Students

Past Students

Stephen Mwaniki -


Affiliation(s):

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust

Education:

Sept 2015- Sept 2016: UCL-IOE, MA Education, Health promotion and international Development- Wellcome Trust Fellowship

2012 Jan – June: Research intern at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust, Kilifi

August 2006- Dec 2010: Kenyatta University, BSc Food Nutrition and Dietetics

Research Interests:

I enjoy working with young people, particularly concerning their well being and health. I am currently running a study seeking to understand the sexual and reproductive health education needs of secondary school students in Kilifi, as part of the Wellcome Trust Masters fellowship award.

Dr. Isabella Oyier

Current Students

Kevin Wamae -

Past Students

Dennis Mutinda -

Leonard Ndwiga -

Zaneta Kidiavai -

Peninnah Makusa -

Dorcas Okanda -

Mutanu Malinda -


Isabella completed her PhD in 2006 at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene on a Gates Malaria Partnership scholarship, in molecular and cell biology of Plasmodium falciparum. The project focused on the molecular characterization of the endocytic marker Rab5 in the parasite. She then joined the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) on a 3 year postdoctoral research position working on studies of natural selection in Plasmodium falciparum merozoite antigen genes, with Prof Kevin Marsh and Dr David Conway. During this project she was involved in establishing the capillary sequencing facility at the unit and began to develop her career in the molecular epidemiology of malaria. She was awarded a 2 year re-entry grant from the Malaria Capacity Development Consortium (MCDC) in 2009 to conduct a longitudinal study on the genetic diversity of merozoite antigens. In 2012 she extended her interest to the genetic diversity of known human erythrocyte receptors involved in the invasion of the merozoite and conducted this work under an 18 month MCDC Initiative award. She is also carried out research on the temporal variation in malaria drug resistance markers in collaboration with Dr. Colin Sutherland at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is based at the Centre of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics (CEBIB), University of Nairobi (UON), since 2011. Isabella was awarded a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Research Fellowship in 2016 to investigate the impact of polymorphisms on Plasmodium falciparum merozoite invasion of erythrocytes and on immune evasion. She continues to conduct studies on antimalarial resistance.

Prof. Hans Koot

Current Students

Dorcas Magai -

Past Students


Hans M. Koot, PhD, is Professor of Developmental Psychology and Developmental Psychopathology at the Department of Clinical, Neuro- and Developmental Psychology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research interests regard emotional and behavioural development of children and adolescents, developmental psychopathology, prevention in mental health care, quality of life, chronic paediatric conditions, learning disabilities and autism. After his psychology studies in 1983 he became a junior researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen, while from 1988 to 2002 he worked as a senior researcher, associate professor and professor at the Erasmus MC Rotterdam Child and Adolescent Psychiatry department. From 2002 he works at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam where he was Chair of the Department of Developmental Psychology, director of the Amsterdam Public Health Mental Health program, and dean of the Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences. Since 2016 he is a visiting fellow at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Department of Clinical-, Neuro- and Developmental Psychology. Koot published about 350 papers in peer reviewed national and international journals, and about 80 books and book chapters, and was advisor of 45 PhD students.