Research Project: Understanding the Effect of Congenital and Perinatal Infections on Immune Responses to Vaccines and Common Childhood Infections in Infants: A Big Data Approach

Joy is a DRIP MSc scholar supervised by Dr Dan Masiga (icipe), Dr. Charles Sande ( KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme ) and Dr. Amana Mzee (Pwani University). Her research interest is in applying computational methods to understand host-pathogen interactions. Specifically integrating pathogen genomics and host functional genomics, as a way to study disease immunopathology and contribute to drug and vaccine discovery and design.  Her project aims to understand the effect of congenital infections on immune responses to vaccination, common and emerging infections in infants during the first years of life using machine learning techniques. Before joining EANBiT, she worked with the Immunomodulation and Vaccines programme at MRC/UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit. While there she worked on various projects that aimed to understand immune profiles to vaccines such as BCG and MVA85A, and infections such as Respiratory Syncytial Virus and how helminth infections influence these profiles.  

Joy is currently undertaking her MSc research project in Bioinformatics at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Programme under the Viral Epidemiology and Control group supported by EANBiT and IDeAL . She holds a BSc. (Biology) from Kyambogo University- Uganda.