I am a Research Fellow in the Infection Biology Department.

I have a background in parasitology and diagnostics development for infectious diseases, particularly immunodiagnostics, which is the basis of my lab work.

I am Project Coordinator for the MALCOV 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 other recent work was a study called Markers of Severity Diagnostics for Evaluating Fever (Mos-Def) which was nested within the large multi-country FIEBRE study on fever aetiology. My work involved 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 are analysing 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 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 conducting research, 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 modules. I contribute to teaching on MSc Control of Infectious Disease, and MSc One Health. I have completed module 1 of the Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching (PG-CILT).