Gyaviira Nkurunungi is an immunologist. He holds a PhD in immuno-epidemiology (2016–2019) and an MSc in immunology (2013–2014), both from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, funded by the African Partnership for Chronic Disease Research and the Commonwealth Scholarships Commission, respectively. Gyaviira was Africa’s first member of the EMBO Global Investigator Network and currently leads the Immunomodulation and Vaccines Group at the MRC/UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit.
Affiliations
Teaching
Gyaviira is a UK Higher Education Academy fellow. He teaches on LSHTM’s MSc in Immunology, and tutors on LSHTM’s MSc in Infectious Diseases (Distance Learning) and Makerere's Master of Medicine. He currently supervises three PhD students, and frequently supervises MSc research projects.
Research
Gyaviira’s research focuses on the immunomodulatory effects of environmental exposures on both communicable and non-communicable diseases, and on vaccine immunogenicity and effectiveness. His PhD investigated immunological mechanisms underlying helminth–allergy associations in rural and urban Uganda, with an emphasis on antibody responses. Earlier in his career, he contributed to research on childhood tuberculosis infection, including studies on the utility of interferon-gamma release assays in Ugandan children. He previously led the immunology team on an MRC UKRI-funded programme of Ugandan vaccine trials exploring population differences in vaccine-specific responses. His work integrates cutting-edge wet-lab techniques with advanced computational approaches to identify biological predictors of vaccine response. He is a member of the HypoVax Global Knowledge Hub on Tackling Vaccine Hyporesponsiveness (https://hypovax.org), and serves as immunology lead for the NIH-funded Uganda Schistosomiasis Multidisciplinary Research Centre, which seeks to uncover the biological drivers of severe schistosomal morbidity.
Selected Publications
