Profile

Currently I am a Lecturer at Pwani University where I teach biology to people who are training to be researchers and biology teachers etc among other professions. As a lecturer, 60 percent of my time is spent teaching and 40 percent generating knowledge by research. It is this 40 percent, which roughly translates to two days a week that I spend on my research. I am trying to understand how people become resistant to malaria, why some people are more vulnerable to malaria and if there are any differences in the parasites that cause different levels of sickness to malaria. To do this, we use blood samples from children who attend Kilifi County Hospital with different levels of malaria severity. We collect the immune cells (white blood cells), the antibodies from plasma and the malaria parasites which live inside red blood cells. In order to identify parasite proteins that we can use as possible malaria vaccine candidates, we look at the genes the parasite is making into proteins at the time of disease, and also how different children recognize these proteins either using their antibodies and or white blood cells. With this information, we hope that we are adding knowledge that scientists can continue using in the search for a malaria vaccine.

Lets stay up late since we cant do early mornings! This must be my motto!

I have a three year old toddler who leaves for school by 8 am. Since I am not an early riser, I spend most of 6.30 to 8 am preparing him and myself for the day. Once he leaves for school, I take a few minutes to finish up my preparations, which will occasionally include having breakfast then leave for the office or lab.

I then typically spend about 30 minutes on my email and social media before I embark on ‘work’. On the days I have a lecture, I will spend an hour before the lecture going through previously prepared material for the lecture, and about 3 hours in class with my students. Most of this material I prepare while the student are away on holiday so that my ‘work’ time is spent making slides and preparing notes. On a lab day, ‘work’ time will be spent either in the lab running different experiments or analyzing the results from the experiments.

Each day I look forward to 5pm! (don’t we all?) On Mondays and Fridays I join my workout group  (beachbodies) for some running and toning workouts. Tuesdays and Thursdays are salsa days where we dance the evening away. I typically go back home between 7-8pm, put my son to bed and get back to some reading-science or fiction depending on my mood. Wednesdays I play mummy in the house-I cook dinner, play with my son and do stuff around the house.

Most of the public engagement with science in Kilifi has been done with secondary schools. I am interested in changing the perceptions towards science in both my students at the university and possibly with a few local primary schools.

Working in close association with the school engagement programme at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust, my approach will be simple

Using previously developed tools eg games on different aspects of science eg immunology or parasitology
Encouraging and advising my students to use their creativity and talents to develop cartoons, skits etc that can be used to communicate different science aspects

I hope this, as a start, will pique the interests of both groups of students.