Prof. Sassy Molyneux

Sassy Molyneux, is an Associate Professor employed by Oxford University, UK, based at the Kenya Medical Research Institute-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya. She is a behavioural scientist, with a background in human geography. Her current main research interests include health system finance and governance, responsiveness of health systems to user and population priorities and concerns, and research ethics. A cross-cutting area of interest is producing new thinking, evidence and recommendations around initiatives aimed at strengthening accountability processes in biomedical research and health delivery in sub-Saharan Africa.

Prof. Vicki Marsh

Vicki Marsh is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health (CTMGH), Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford University, UK and the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) in Kenya. At the KWTRP, her research within the Health Systems and Research Ethics department focuses on empirical ethics approaches to strengthening policy and practice in international research, including for community engagement, informed consent, disclosure of genetic findings, benefits and payments, and data sharing and on vulnerability and resilience in research. She has teaching, mentorship and science and ethics governance roles at KWTRP. At CTMGH, she coordinates, teaches and examines on ethics and public engagement in research and public health for an MSc course in Tropical Medicine and International Health. Between 2013 and 2015, she was a member of a UK Nuffield Council on Bioethics working group on ethical issues for research involving children and young people. Vicki’s DPhil thesis focused on ethical issues in research on Sickle Cell Disease in Kenya, including feedback of genetic findings; this work was supervised by Prof Michael Parker, director of Ethox. Originally trained in medicine and general practice in the UK, Vicki has lived in Kenya for more than 25 years, initially as part of the team that established KWTRP in 1990. During this early period, her research on Malaria Home Care was internationally recognised, and informed policy in the Kenya National Malaria Control Programme and the WHO/TDR Roll Back Malaria strategy in the World Health Organization.

Prof. James Kahindi

Email : jkahindi@pu.ac.ke

Prof. Caroline Jones

Affiliation(s):

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust, Kenya

Caroline Jones, a senior social scientist, joined the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in February 2010. With a background in medical anthropology her research over the past 15 years has focused on treatment seeking and preventive behaviors for malaria and the factors that influence provider practices in sub-Saharan Africa. More recently she has been looking at the implement ability and sustainability of public health interventions, focusing on issues relating to social relationships, organizational structure and management and leadership. Research capacity strengthening and the promotion of the appropriate use of high quality social science research in the development and implementation of public health policy are major concerns underpinning much of her work. A key role in her current position is to contribute to building Kenyan and regional expertise to develop and lead such research.

Dr. Abdirahman Abdi

Abdi is molecular biologist with special interest in malaria. Abdi worked with the Programme between 2005-2006 as an intern, then research assistant investigating antimalarial drug resistance. He was then awarded a Ph.D. studentship by the AntiMal International Ph.D. Programme where he joined Prof Christian Doerig’s laboratory at the University of Glasgow working on P. falciparum protein Kinases. He rejoined the Programme in 2010 as Post Doc to work with Dr Peter Bull on PfEMP1 and it is role in the pathogenesis of severe malaria. In 2014 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Training Fellowship to study the secretome of malaria parasites.

Dr. Dorcas Kamuya

Affilliation(s):

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust, Kenya

Dorcas is a post-doctoral Researcher in Ethics and Community Engagement on the Global Bioethics Network at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford. She is primarily based at the KEMRI Wellcome Trust (KWTRP), Kenya and works across the UK and the five Wellcome Trust’s Major Overseas Programmes (MOPs) in Kenya, Thailand, Malawi, Vietnam, and South Africa. Her roles include facilitating the strategic development of community engagement activities at KWTRP; coordinating Global Bioethics Network activities aimed at sharing of expertise in community engagement across the MOPs; and developing and leading a research programme around the evaluation of community engagement. Her research interests include ethical implications of community engagement processes in international collaborative research in developing countries; exploring drivers of CE in health research; and ethical and practical challenges and dilemmas for interface research staff. Dorcas’s previous role, as the Community Liaison Manager, included setting-up mechanisms for engaging with over 260,000 residents often involved in health research, strengthening collaborative partnerships between KWTRP and key health stakeholders, providing support to research interface staff (especially fieldworkers), and carrying our action research around these activities. Dorcas has a PhD from the Open University, UK; a Masters in Public Health (health promotion) from London School of Hygiene and Tropical, and a BSc. in Agricultural Economics from Egerton University, Kenya.