Dr. Emelda Okiro

Emelda has over 15 years of professional experience in Epidemiology and Public health and heads the Population health unit. She has worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, Philips Research Africa and also worked with several partners including PMI and ICF Macro.

Emelda returned to the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme in October 2016 from a Senior Health Scientist position at Philips Research Africa. She is leading the Population Health unit and Research theme within the Programme which aims to understand changing epidemiology of malaria, understand the determinants of health transitions and vulnerabilities at fine scales a major component of which is malnutrition in Kenya and across Africa, and to embed the use of data for decision-making by national ministries.

Her current work focuses on exploring the spatial heterogeneity of child survival across Kenya using multiple survey data to map and explore the Spatial, Social and Environmental determinants of childhood mortality. Emelda has previously worked on the measurements of trends of P. falciparum burden across sites of varying malaria endemicities in Africa and on evaluating the impact of scaled malaria control interventions and supporting regional Ministries of Health in Uganda, Malawi and Kenya. At the Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, Seattle Emelda worked on identifying determinants of cost-effective anti-retroviral treatment programs in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia.

During her academic research career, she has been awarded two internationally competitive Wellcome Trust Research Fellowships. Emelda is widely published and has a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Egerton University, Kenya and a PhD in Epidemiology through the Open University – UK in collaboration with Warwick University, UK.

Prof. Bob Snow

Email : RSnow@kemri-wellcome.org

Bob has worked in Africa for over 32 years. He is Professor of Malaria Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and Principal Scientist in the programme based in Nairobi. His work began with the first clinical trials of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITN) in The Gambia (1984-1988) and he has since developed a large programme of work from Kenya on the phenotype of malaria disease, its relationship to parasite exposure and its wider public health burden. His work has influenced international strategies for pro-poor access to ITN, how sub-regional, evidence-based platforms can effectively change malaria treatment policies and how inequities in international donor assistance for malaria control can be changed with appropriate data on risk and national economic capacities at global scales. He has published over 400 articles on malaria, he is the longest serving Oxford scientist of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust collaboration in Kenya (since 1989), he established the MARA pan-African collaboration (1996), was the founding Director of the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP) (2005-2010), is a technical advisor to the Kenyan Government, sits on a number of international malaria advisory panels and is the Senior Advisor to the UK-DFID funded INFORM Project. Bob’s work continues to provide the bridge between basic malaria epidemiology and malaria control policy in the region. From 2015, his work extended to provide support to WHO countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Bob was made a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in 2008 and an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2015. He is supported by the Wellcome Trust (UK) as a Principal Fellow

Prof. Benn Sartorious

My academic qualifications includes a PhD in applied epidemiology/biostatistics, a 2-year applied field epidemiology fellowship (European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training [EPIET]) and an MSc in epidemiology and biostatistics. My research interests include: cancer epidemiology with an increased focus on the viral etiology thereof, global and regional underestimation of specific cancers in developing settings with poor quality data, Bayesian spatial-temporal modelling, risk determinant estimation for longitudinal outcomes within various statistical frameworks and application of inequality indices to health outcomes. I have more than a 100 international peer reviewed publications. I have served as a reviewer for more than a dozen international ISI accredited journals (e.g. BMC Medicine, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, American Journal of Public Health) thus far. I’m also an associate editor for BMC Public Health and an official reviewer for Geospatial Health. I joined the Global Burden of Disease (GDB) Project from 2015 and was invited to be a member of the GBD Scientific Council shortly thereafter.

Prof. Olubayi Olubayi

Prof. O. Olubayi was born and raised in Kenya and educated at Rutgers University in the USA. Prior to joining Maarifa Education, he was the Vice Chancellor/President of the International University of East Africa (IUEA) in Uganda. He is a scientist and an expert on bacteria, education, learning, leadership and social-entrepreneurship.

As a scientist and eclectic scholar, Olubayi earned his Ph.D. on bacteria-and-plant cell interactions at Rutgers University, holds a research patent on the flocculation of bacteria and has published several scholarly articles in microbiology, biotechnology and social science.

As an educator he taught at Middlesex College and at Rutgers University for 16 years, and has taught critical thinking in the IUEA MBA program. He has been an advisor and consultant to government officials in Kenya and South Africa, and UNDP on matters of literacy, education, biotechnology, sustainable development and global citizenship.

As a social entrepreneur, Olubayi co-founded the non-profit Kiwimbi International and the widely respected American non-profit Global Literacy Project which sets up libraries worldwide and provides global service learning opportunities.

As a thinker, he is the author of the book “Education for a Better World,” and he is currently working on a book on “The Role of a Teacher.”

Prof. Philip Bejon

Email : PBejon@kemri-wellcome.org

Phone : +07-5555-565

I first came to Kilifi in 2002 to conduct Phase I and IIb clinical trials of a candidate malaria vaccine based on viral vectors. I returned to the University of Oxford in 2006 to complete specialist clinical training as a clinical lecturer, and then was appointed as a senior fellow in the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. These posts allowed me to remain active in malaria research, leading further trials of GSK’s candidate malaria vaccine “RTS,S”, and as a member of the Malaria Vectored Vaccine Consortium funded to test viral vectored malaria vaccines in several sites in Africa including Kilifi. An MRC Clinician-Scientist Fellowship, allowed me to return to be resident full-time in Kilifi in 2013, and I became Executive Director of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in September 2014.

Prof. Ifedayo Adetifa

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.

Dr. Symon Kariuki

Affiliation(s):

KEMRI – Wellcome Trust, Kenya