Beatrice Amboko

Beatrice has a background in Nursing and a Masters in Medical Statistics both from the University of Nairobi. She has been working on quality of care given to patients with malaria in Kenyan hospitals. She is interested in looking at the quality of health workers’ performance and the determinants in providing care in health facilities.

Her PhD project is on the determinants of the quality of outpatient malaria case management in Kenyan public health facilities. The results from this project will help refine/ define interventions geared towards improving health workers’ performance.

David Collins

Email : DCollins@kemri-wellcome.org

Collins is a molecular virologist interested in the applications of molecular techniques and bioinformatics in investigating infectious diseases. He holds a Bachelor’s in Biomedical Technology from the University of Nairobi (First Class Honours) and a Master’s in Molecular Genetics and Diagnostics from the University of Nottingham. He is currently an IDeAL PhD student under the Virus Epidemiology and Control Group. His PhD seeks to understand the introduction, evolution, and transmission of the 2009/2010 pandemic influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 virus in Kenya
He has previously worked as a research scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-Kenya; a current collaborating institution for his PhD project.

John Muthii Muriuki

Email : JMuriuki@kemri-wellcome.org

I’m an epidemiologist with experience in mathematical modelling and analysis of large datasets. I previously worked on modelling transmission dynamics of malaria in an irrigated setting and mapping of the drivers of poor nutritional outcomes in different ecological settings in Kenya. These studies sparked my current interest to research on the complex interactions between nutrition and infections. My PhD project entails investigating whether iron status is causally associated with the risks of malaria and bacterial infections in African children. I’m utilising Mendelian randomization to draw the causal inference. My study will also identify novel genetic variants that alter iron status in a genome-wide association study of African children. Currently, the safety of giving iron supplementation remains a long-standing conundrum among clinicians and policy makers. This study will therefore have an impact on public health policy for managing iron deficiency and the associated infections. In future, I hope to extend this concept to understand how nutritional deficiencies relate to other disease processes.

Publications:

1. A comparison of malaria prevalence, control and management strategies in irrigated and non-irrigated areas in eastern Kenya. Muriuki J.M., Kitala P., Muchemi G., Njeru I., Karanja J., Bett B. | Malaria Journal, 2016 15:402 DOI: 10.1186/s12936-016-1458-4
2. Muriuki John Muthii, Alexander Mentzer, Gavin Band, James Gilchrist, Tommy Carstensen, Swaib Lule, Morgan Goheen, et al. (2019). “The Ferroportin Q248H Mutation Protects from Anemia, but Not Malaria or Bacteremia.” Science Advances 5 (9): eaaw0109. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw0109
3. Muriuki John Muthii, Alexander J Mentzer, Emily L Webb, Alireza Morovat, Wandia Kimita, Francis M Ndungu, Alex W Macharia, et al. (2019). “Malaria Is Causally Associated with Iron Deficiency in African Children.” AAS Open Research. https://aasopenresearch.org/documents/2-141
4. Muriuki John Muthii, Alexander J Mentzer, Wandia Kimita, Francis M Ndungu, Alex W Macharia, Emily L Webb, Swaib A Lule, et al. (2018). “Iron Status and Associated Malaria Risk Among African Children.” Clinical Infectious Diseases. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30219845
5. Muriuki John Muthii, and Sarah Atkinson. (2018). “How Eliminating Malaria May Also Prevent Iron Deficiency in African Children.” Pharmaceuticals 11 (4): 96. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30275421.
6. Muriuki John Muthii, Philip Kitala, Gerald Muchemi, Ian Njeru, Joan Karanja, and Bernard Bett. (2016). “A Comparison of Malaria Prevalence, Control and Management Strategies in Irrigated and Non-Irrigated Areas in Eastern Kenya.” Malaria Journal 15 (1): 402. https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12936-016-1458-4

Dr. Clara Agutu, MBChB

Clara Agutu is a medical doctor with a Masters in public health. She has a keen interest in infectious diseases particularly HIV, TB, Malaria and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and has worked as a research medical officer at KEMRI. She worked as the lead clinician and study co-ordinator for a multi-centre HIV clinical trial, REALITY (Reduction of Early Mortality in HIV-infected Adults and Children starting Anti-retroviral Therapy), looking to investigate interventions aimed at reducing early mortality during the first three months of starting anti-retroviral therapy, when mortality is the highest in the severely immune-suppressed. She is currently a WHO/TDR clinical research and development fellow at GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Belgium working on the malaria vaccine, RTS, S, particularly on phase 2 and 3 trials aimed at improving the vaccines efficacy and subsequent implementation in sub-Saharan Africa. Her SANTHE PhD studentship is in the field of acute HIV screening, for early HIV infection detection and reduction of HIV transmission as she continues the global fight towards the elimination of HIV.

Dorcas Magai

My educational background includes a Masters in Clinical and Developmental Psychopathology from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, in The Netherlands and a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Kenyatta University, Kenya.

One in four people globally will be affected by mental health and neuorological disorders at some point in their lives, placing mental disorders among the major causes of disease and disability globally.  My great interest is understanding the etiology, diagnostics and intervention of psychopathology in children and adolescents. My focus is to determine the development of psychopathology; establishing personal, social, and biological factors that contribute to this development; the use of scientific knowledge to improve detection and diagnostics of psychopathology; and how we can influence children and adolescents’ psychopathology through preventive and clinical interventions.

My PhD project is on the long-term consequences of severe ill-health during the first 28 days of life on thinking and learning abilities, and mental health of school aged children. Specifically, I’m interested in neonatal conditions such as yellow coloring of the skin (neonatal jaundice) and inadequate oxygen flow in the brain (hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy), which are likely to injure the child’s brain and affect their development.

By examining the adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes of neonatal insults, we hope to contribute to identifying salient points of intervention to enhance the quality of life of children who experienced these neonatal insults.