Dr. George Githinji

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. Etienne de Villers

Etienne de Villiers is a Principal Investigator in Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford and has been employed since 2012 to establish a Bioinformatics and Genomics platform at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya. He graduated from Stellenbosch University in South Africa with a M.Sc. in Biochemistry, and was appointed Researcher and later, Senior Researcher at the Agricultural Research Council – Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in South Africa in 1992. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Utrecht University, The Netherlands in 2001. He is a molecular biologist by training that developed an interest in computing and ventured into the area of bioinformatics and has an interest in the application of bioinformatics to develop vaccines and diagnostics for orphan diseases of both livestock and now humans. At Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute he was part of the team that sequenced the first bacterial genome in Africa (Ehrlichia ruminantium) and in 2002 he accepted a Postdoctoral Scientist position at the International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya to establish a bioinformatics unit to support the Theileria parva genome-sequencing project in collaboration with The Institute of Genomic Research (TIGR) to develop a vaccine against East Coast Fever. In 2003 he was appointed as scientist and Bioinformatics Group Leader at the ILRI-BecA platform. He is actively involved in capacity building in bioinformatics in East and central Africa and has introduced several hundred students to the subject. He currently has an appointment as Adjunct Associate Professor at Pwani University, Department of Public Health and is executive board member of EMBnet, The Global Bioinformatics Network.