Dr. Eunice Nduati
Email : ENduati@kemri-wellcome.org Current Mentees
Alice Kamau
Alice Kamau
Email : AKamau@kemri-wellcome.org Alice Kamau is a statistician who has worked at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme since 2011. In 2014 she was awarded a Wellcome Trust Fellowship to study Msc Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and to undertake an 18 months project on the variation of the effectiveness of insecticide treated nets (ITNs) in Kilifi, which aimed at understanding the epidemiological and ecological characteristics of residual malaria transmission and the biological implications of long-term and widespread use of ITNs.
Her PhD work is aimed at examining potential utility of an array of routinely gathered metrics in predicting variation in malaria transmission. The resultant of this work will not only be used to identify the most promising metrics that can serve as a replacement of more expensive community-based prevalence surveys but also to assess the impact of interventions and react to changes in malaria prevalence by identifying the affected population and adjust malaria control to this group as well as inform policies and decision making.
Akua Botwe
Akua has research interests in malaria vaccine development, molecular biology and immunology. She has had training in Biochemistry (MPhil. and BSc. Hons) and Botany (BSc. Hons) at the University of Ghana, and has worked as a molecular biologist at the Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC) in Ghana.
Her PhD study is “simply” to understand why some infants have malaria parasites and remain healthy while other infants have malaria parasites and become ill. Her research is supervised by Prof. Anna Farnert at the Karolinska Institutet, Prof. Faith Osier at KEMRI-Kilifi and Heidelberg University Hospital and Dr. Kwaku Poku Asante at KHRC.
Akua has a passion for writing, teaching/mentoring and nurturing children who lose their mothers at birth. At leisure, she would go swimming.
Past Mentees
I joined the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) in Nairobi working on antimalarial drug resistance. In 2005 I transferred to Kilifi to pursue my interest in the immunology of infectious diseases under the Biology and Pathology of the Malaria Parasite (BiolMalPar) Ph.D. training programme. This was a collaborative programme with time spent between the UK and Kenya. My thesis was on understanding host immune responses, specifically B-cell regulation in malaria. On returning to Kenya, I was awarded 6 months funding by BIOMALPAR/European Molecular Biology Laboratories (EMBL) a European Union Initiative to understand the role of soluble factors, such as the B cell activating factor (BAFF) on B-cell differentiation and function. I then successfully obtained a Wellcome Trust Training Fellowship, which supported my work on B-cell regulation in HIV infection and exposure. The aim of this work was to understand whether exposure to HIV virus or antigens, antiretroviral drugs and/or an altered placental cytokine milieu, in utero, affects the developing immune system in infants born to HIV infected mothers but are themselves not infected. In HIV infection, I have been involved in understanding B cell phenotypic and functional changes in HIV infected children. Currently I hold a mid-career fellowship with the IDeAL program at KWTRP and working within the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI)-Vaccine Immunology Science and Technology for Africa (IAVI-VISTA) consortium, which has established longitudinal HIV cohorts. My work involves understanding adaptive immune responses, specifically T cell and B cell functions in early HIV infection and how this may impact on subsequent disease outcomes.
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