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Contributor Biography

Irene Omedo is a graduate student with the Open University, UK. She has a BSc in Biochemistry and a Masters in molecular biology from the University of Nairobi. She is undertaking her research studies at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Collaborative Research Programme, in Kilifi, Kenya, working in collaboration with Prof. Dominic Kwiatkowski’s lab at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human genetics, University of Oxford. She is interested in the application of molecular epidemiology in routine surveillance of diseases, and is currently working on mapping malaria hotspots to guide targeted intervention programmes in Kenya. Philip Bejon first came to Kilifi in 2002 to conduct Phase I and II clinical trials of a candidate malaria vaccine based on viral vectors. I returned to the University of Oxford in 2006 to complete specialist clinical training as a clinical lecturer, and then was appointed as a senior fellow in the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. These posts allowed me to remain active in malaria research, leading further trials of GSK's candidate malaria vaccine "RTS,S", and as a member of the Malaria Vectored Vaccine Consortium funded to test viral vectored malaria vaccines in several sites in Africa including Kilifi. An MRC Clinician-Scientist Fellowship allowed me to return to be resident full-time in Kilifi in 2013, working on spatial epidemiology of malaria with an interest in hotspots, and I became Executive Director of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in September 2014.