APPLICATION OF BIG DATA FOR COVID-19 RESPONSE IN KENYA

Description

The role of SARS-CoV-2 genomics in informing community transmission and public health decision making.

Objectives

Presenters

1. Dr. John Ojal
   Ojal has a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Before joining MPRU as a Research Fellow in Infectious Disease Modelling, he worked as a statistician in the Epidemiology and Demography Department at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Wellcome Trust (KEMRI-Wellcome Trust) research programme in Kilifi, Kenya, for about 10 years. During this time, his work focused on assessing both individual and population level effects of vaccination with PCV on carriage and transmission of Streptococcus pneumoniae and the subsequent incidence of Invasive Pneumococcal Disease (IPD). He has extended findings on PCV impact to study the cost-effectiveness and the sustainability of PCV in Kenya. He uses mathematical modelling in most of his work. At MPRU, Ojalâ??s main focus is on modelling how countries, mostly in Africa, can switch to reduced dose schedules over time with the goal of cost-saving.
   KEMRI


2. Dr. George Githinji
   George is an IDeAL early career post-doctoral fellow at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme. He utilises bioinformatics approaches in studies of virus evolution and transmission.His current project investigates the role of minority variants in virus evolution and in reconstructing virus transmission chains. George holds a Bachelors degree in Biomedical Science and Technology from Egerton University and a PhD from the Open University (UK) advised by Dr Peter Bull (University of Cambridge), Prof Kevin Marsh (Oxford University) and Dr Britta Urban (University of Liverpool). His PhD thesis explored the extent of sequence and epitope diversity within a short region of the PfEMP1 molecule that is associated with characteristic expression patterns in severe and non-severe malaria cases. Before joining the programme, George trained at the MoMs malaria project in Tanzania and SBRI (now Center for Infectious Disease Research) in Dr Patrick Duffyâ??s lab and received courses in bioinformatics topics at the University of Washington George is interested in developing reproducible bioinformatics data processing workflows and is keen on open source software developmen
   KEMRI


3. Dr. Benson Chuma
   General practitioner
   Equity Afia