Biography

I developed a passion for infectious disease research whilst undertaking my BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Nairobi. Upon graduating in 2013, I did an internship at the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme alongside the malaria immunology group. I later joined the US Army Medical Research Unit where I did another internship with the influenza surveillance group. In July 2015, I was offered a Commonwealth Scholarship by DFID to pursue an MSc in International Health & Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford. Consequently, I worked with the malaria vaccine research group at the Jenner Institute for my thesis project. During my MSc, I founded the STEMing Africa Initiative ( https://stemingafricainitiative.wordpress.com/ ) to advocate for the active inclusion of women in STEM by supporting talented female graduates in STEM to secure scholarships for advanced degrees at leading universities worldwide. The modest awards from the Western Union, UNESCO, the Forum for African Women Educationalists, and the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) helped me to spearhead this program. I also got an opportunity to enhance my leadership skills whilst participating as a fellow in the 2018 Mandela Washington Fellowship, a flagship program started by former president Barack Obama to connect young African leaders with leaders from the United States. For my Ph.D., I applied machine learning to model the distribution and determinants of anthrax disease risk across Uganda and Kenya. My work will accelerate anthrax disease elimination by providing guidance for targeted disease prevention and surveillance.

Previous Education

University Of Nairobi
University of Oxford