Dr Cheseto Xavier
Dr. Xavier Cheseto is a Postdoctoral Fellow at icipe, working in the Insects for Food, Feed and Other Uses (INSEFF) Programme under the Environmental Health Theme. He holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Kenya and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from Kenyatta University.
His research focuses on the chemistry of insects, spanning chemical ecology, food chemistry, and natural product discovery. He has authored over 70 peer-reviewed publications and 4 book chapters, and received several prestigious awards, including the Rothamsted International Fellowship (UK), icipe’s Governing Council Outstanding Research Publication of the year and Award for Best Published Science Paper. In 2018, he was appointed by the then Director General of icipe to serve as a Task Force member within Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation, State Department of Livestock, where he contributed to accelerating the re-listing of Kenyan honey with the European Commission. He also serves as icipe’s coordinating lead for the NSF-IRES programme and contributes actively to resource mobilization for the Centre’s research initiatives.
Beyond research, Dr. Cheseto is deeply committed to capacity building, having supervised MSc and PhD students, mentored postdoctoral fellows, and trained more than 50 interns in analytical and natural products chemistry. He regularly engages in manufacturer-led trainings to stay at the forefront of advanced instrumentation such as NMR, LC-Orbitrap-MS, LC-Qtof-MS, LC-MS/MS and GC-MS, ensuring excellence in both his research and training. He is an active member of several professional bodies, including the Natural Products Research Network for Eastern and Central Africa (NAPRECA), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and the Kenya Chemical Society (KCS).