I am a Research Fellow in the Clinical Research Department.

I have a background in parasitology and diagnostics development for infectious diseases, particularly immunodiagnostics.

I currently work on two projects: a study called Markers of Severity Diagnostics for Evaluating Fever (Mos-Def) which is nested within the large multi-country FIEBRE study on fever aetiology. My work involves developing a multiplex bead-based immunoassay on the Luminex platform to detect molecules released by the immune system during infection. By quantifying these markers in blood samples from the FIEBRE study, we will analyse which markers are useful to provide a prognosis for fever cases and which markers can differentiate between causes of fever such as bacterial, viral or parasitic.

My other role is as project coordinator for a study on the effect of Plasmodium infection (malaria) on COVID-19 disease progression and outcome. The MALCOV study is taking place in Kenya and Burkina Faso and includes measurement of many immunological and clinical parameters, as well as virus and parasite characteristics, to untangle the interaction between these components.

My PhD, at LSHTM, was on diagnostics development for two parasitic infections: strongyloidiasis caused by the nematode (worm) Strongyloides stercoralis, and visceral leishmaniasis caused by the protozoan Leishmania. This included laboratory and field work in India and Guinea Bissau, as well as computational methods of antigen discovery using large open-access data sets such as genomes, proteomes and transcriptomes.

In addition to my research work, I act as a personal tutor to students on the MSc Control of Infectious Diseases, co-supervise a PhD student and MSc research projects, act as a tutor for Distance Learning module Biology of Infectious Diseases and sit on the exam board for MSc One Health. I am currently studying for the Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching (PG-CILT).