Yunia Mayanja is a public health specialist. She holds a bachelor’s degree in medicine and surgery and a master’s degree in public health, both from Makerere university- Uganda.  In 2016, she was one of the pioneer junior scientists that received a fellowship to conduct research in HIV among adolescents at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in Cape Town. One year later, she was awarded a career development fellowship by the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership / EDCTP (TMA2016CDF-1574) to conduct research assessing HIV related outcomes, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), substance use, violence and study retention among 14-19-year-old male and female adolescents (2018-2021). She has followed up high-risk young women (14-24 years) in an oral PrEP implementation project through an award from the IAVI/ ADVANCE program (2018-2020), and was a co-applicant on grant that was awarded by EDCTP (CSA2018HS-2525) to study preferences for future multi-purpose prevention products against HIV, pregnancy and STIs among female sex workers and young women in Kenya and Uganda, and cost-effectiveness of different delivery models (2020-2024). She has published extensively from these and previous projects that included studies on HIV/STI epidemiology and HIV vaccine preparedness studies among female sex workers (2012-2019). In 2020, she was awarded the academic title of Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)- UK and is currently pursuing doctoral studies at Karolinska Institutet- Sweden (2022-2026).