Prof. Kathryn Maitland, FMedSc

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).

Prof. John Fraser

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. Evelyn Gitau

Dr. Evelyn Gitau is the Director of Research Capacity Strengthening. Under her direction, the division will continue to grow its signature fellowship program, the Consortium for the Advancement of Research Training in Africa (CARTA), and expand opportunities across the continent for African scholars to become great research leaders.

Dr. Gitau’s most recent role was as a program manager at the African Academy of Sciences, where she stewarded the Grand Challenges Africa at the Academy under the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) program. Prior to that, she was part of the team at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Program in Kilifi, Kenya, conducting research on developing biomarkers of disease among seriously ill children.

Dr. Gitau earned her PhD in Life Sciences from the Open University/Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK, investigating neurological infections in children living in malaria-endemic areas. She has more than 15 years of experience in medical research.

Among her awards and accomplishments include a 2015 appointment as a fellow of the Next Einstein Forum, where she is the ambassador for the development of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Africa.

Dr. Gitau’s vast networks have brought her positions on numerous advisory boards for organizations advancing the agenda of research and evidence generation in Africa. These include the Independent Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB), Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme College of Medicine, Blantyre, Malawi, University of Oxford (MSc International Health and Tropical Medicine) and and the Investment Committee Grand Challenges Canada. She will remain a member of the Steering Committee for Grand Challenges Africa.

Dr. Patricia Njuguna

Affiliated Institution:

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust, Kenya 

Patricia is Paediatrician based in Kilifi, Kenya. She graduated with a Masters in Medicine (Paediatrics and Child Health) (University of Nairobi) in 2006. She has worked in the area of neurology (Neurodiability in the community) under Prof Charles Newton from 2001-2003. Her Master’s thesis was an audit of management of coma in the national referral hospital. From 2006 she has been involved with the Clinical Trials Facility working in the area of malaria vaccines. This includes the GSK candidate vaccine – RTS,S. Her other interests include mechanisms that governments and other agencies use to determine the uptake of various vaccines in different parts of the world. She is a member of the Brighton collaboration, the Kenya Medical Association and the Kenya Paediatric Association. Patricia is author or co-author of 8 publications in malaria and neurology.

Dr. Alison Talbert

Affiliation(s):

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust, Kenya 

Alison Talbert is a paediatrician with research interests in malnutrition, infection and infant and young child feeding. She moved to Kilifi in 2005 from Tanzania where she collaborated with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine on tick-borne relapsing fever control using insecticide treated bed nets. In Kilifi she has worked on malnutrition studies led by Professor Kath Maitland and Dr. Jay Berkley. She has been an investigator on a study of endotoxinaemia in malnutrition and malaria, and on clinical trials of an outpatient treatment strategy of ready to use supplementary food in moderate malnutrition (Modmal) and omega-3 PUFA enriched ready to use therapeutic food in treatment of severe acute malnutrition (NjuguPlus). She is now leading a community based study of breastfeeding practices and advice given to first time mothers in Jaribuni Division.

Dr. Sam Akech

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.