The icipe Thomas Odhiambo Campus (ITOC), located in Mbita Point, western Kenya, was established in 1977, as a base for the Centre’s research. It is an ideal venue for research and development, due to its scenic and serene setting on the shores of Lake Victoria. Its setting in tropical Africa makes it an ideal location for research and innovation in topical biosciences and human development with a wide range of applications in tropical agriculture, agri-food systems, climate resilience, human, animal and environmental health, aquaculture, marine ecology, data sciences, distance learning as well as international research collaboration. Moreover, the campus has high development potential, manned by an international skilled academic and research community.
The Campus sits on 24.5 hectares of land, 40% of which consists of experimental fields and landscaped buildings. ITOC’s research structures include state-of-the-art laboratories and offices, as well as insects and animal rearing facilities. The Campus has a world class Mbita Guest House.
ITOC provides:
- Infrastructure for basic and applied laboratory and field-based natural and social science research. It has 20 acres of research fields with adequate irrigation facilities.
- Facilities for the development, testing and dissemination of environmentally safe and sustainable pest and vector management technologies. These include 2 research laboratories, with enough capacity to support several research experiments and at least 20 graduate students, 18 screenhouses, two semi-field research screen houses, and insectaries. One insectary has potential to be upgraded to a Level-2 containment laboratory.
- Educational facilities for icipe researchers, visiting scientists, trainees, farmers and public health practitioners on arthropod science, pest and vector control and research methodologies.
- Versatile conference/workshop and teaching facilities
The campus has excellent research support facilities that are enabling a successful and thriving scientific community. This includes:
- A modern guest centre that can host 16 guests. It has a modern lecture theatre, two meeting rooms with adequate conference facilities, dining hall. The guest centre has an annex that can host up to 16 scholars and has a good meeting hall and kitchen space.
- A graduate students’ apartment block with capacity to house 20 students.
- Staff accommodation for more than 40 senior, mid-level and technical staff.
- Excellent internet and email network
- Adequate clean, treated water. Its water treatment facility produces about 200M3 of water daily. The water quality consistently meets ISO quality standards.
- Stable and constant electricity power supply supported by solar and generator power sources in addition to the KPLC power grid.
- A motor vehicle maintenance workshop.
- A good security system.
- A primary school managed by Kenya’s Ministry of Education, and a sports facility.
These facilities attract scientists and scholars from a large variety of international organisations, providing a rich mix of backgrounds and disciplines to work on complex research questions.
Every year, about 50 – 70 interns from tertiary institutions are attached to various research projects to gain practical experience. At least two World Food Prize interns are mentored at the station annually.
Research activities at ITOC cover icipe’s 4-H Themes: Human, Animal, Plant and Environmental Health. In particular, ITOC is the base of icipe’s push-pull technology research, several human and animal research projects, as well as studies on fruit fly IPM.
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Visit the icipe Thomas Odhiambo Campus here.