University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

University of KwaZulu-NatalUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), HIV Pathogenesis Program (HPP), Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine is based in Durban, South Africa. HPP is a research initiative that was collaboratively founded by UKZN and Harvard Medical School in 2002. The HPP laboratory is located at the Doris Duke Medical Research Institute and serves as a center for training of African scientists through regular workshops. UKZN and Harvard work closely on research and training efforts, and approximately 5-10 African students and researchers annually have been sponsored to visit the Ragon Institute at Harvard and MIT in Boston for short-term training. The HPP laboratory serves as both a facility for exploratory pathogenesis and translational research into HIV and TB, as well as a sample repository for all HPP studies samples. UKZN is also an integral part of the Wellcome Trust funded Africa Centre for Population Studies (recently renamed as Africa Health Research Institute), with a large rural population based research program, with which Harvard faculty have had a longstanding research and training collaboration.


Site Director

Dr. Thumbi Ndung'uDr. Thumbi Ndung’u, Deputy Director (Science) and Max Planck Group Leader, Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI); Professor and Victor Daitz Chair in HIV/TB Research, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Ndungu@ukzn.ac.za

Scientific Director of the HIV Pathogenesis Programme at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. He is a virologist with a PhD from Harvard University, Boston, USA. His main research interests are in host-virus interactions and immune responses in HIV-1 infection. He is also interested in the development of biomedical interventions that can be used in resource-limited settings to prevent or treat HIV/AIDS. He is an Associate Professor in HIV/AIDS Research at the the Doris Duke Medical Research Institute, Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal. He holds the South African Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation (DST/NRF) Research Chair in Systems Biology of HIV/AIDS.


Site Mentors

Dr. Mohlopheni MarakalalaDr. Marakalala, Faculty, Africa Health Research Institute & Associate Professor, University College London
mohlopheni.marakalala@ahri.org

Dr. Marakalala is a Faculty Member and Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellow at AHRI, an Associate Professor at University College London’s Division of Infection and Immunity, Honorary Research Associate at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Visiting Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. He received his PhD in Chemical Pathology at UCT in 2008, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in innate immunity at UCT’s Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine. He then joined Harvard in 2012 for a four-year postdoctoral fellowship in Immunology and Infectious Diseases. In 2016, he rejoined UCT as a Senior Lecturer until his current appointment at AHRI and UCL. His research focuses on developing TB biomarkers and host-directed therapies by studying factors associated with disease progression using lung tissue and blood samples from TB patients. He is also interested in cell death modalities in the mononuclear phagocyte system and their role in TB immunopathogenesis and on understanding strategies utilized by Mycobacterium tuberculosis to subvert the host immune system.

Prof. Mosa MoshabelaDr. Moshabela, Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Innovation (Acting) University of KwaZulu-Natal Westville Campus Durban, South Africa
Moshabela@ukzn.ac.za

Professor Moshabela currently holds the position of Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Innovation (Acting) University of KwaZulu-Natal Westville Campus Durban, South Africa. He is a chief medical specialist, having trained as a medical practitioner (MBChB), and specialized in Family Medicine and Primary Health Care (M Fam. Med). He further completed a Masters in Demography and Health (MSc), and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the field of Public Health, with a specific focus on health systems and policy research. He is Adjunct Faculty and a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Africa Health Research Institute, South Africa. His research portfolio in implementation science and health systems research cuts across multiple disciplines, and involves the design, implementation and evaluation of complex interventions in public healthcare services and programs, and seeks to improve access, quality and equity in healthcare, in ways appropriate for resource-poor settings in sub-Saharan Africa.

Henry-MwambiProf. Henry Mwambi, Professor, University of KwaZulu-Natal
MwambiH@ukzn.ac.za

Professor Mwambi has taught theory and applied courses, among them a Biostatistics course covering key areas in biostatistics, namely general epidemiology principles, cohort studies, case-control studies, survival analysis and clinical trials. He is currently working with and has supervised a number of PhD and Masters students on various topics in biostatistics and epidemiology such as the analysis of non-Gaussian longitudinal and clustered disease outcome data, survival analysis, modelling recurrent events, longitudinal data analysis including missing data, and infectious disease modelling.

Dr. Saloshni NaidooDr. naidoo, Associate Professor/Chief Specialist/Head of Discipline, Public Health Medicine, School of Nursing and Public Health, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Naidoos71@ukzn.ac.za

Dr. Naidoo is currently the Head of the Department (HOD) of Public Health Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her interest in Public Health and Occupational Medicine started with her Postgraduate Degree in Occupational Health at the University of Cape Town (UCT). This formed the basis for her career and research path which started as a Medical Office employed by the National Centre for Occupational Health (1998). She was responsible for “Assessing Occupational Health Service Provision in Public Sector Hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).” During this time, she was exposed to Pesticide Toxicology having coordinated a Pesticide Safety workshop, jointly funded by the CDC (USA) and NIOSH (USA). She received a short-term Fogarty Fellowship at the University of Iowa, USA furthering her training in Occupational Health and Pesticide Toxicology. Returning to South Africa and working in Public Health Medicine would evolve as her research interest namely, (1) Tuberculosis (TB) exposure and disease in HCWs and (2) Pesticide exposure in agricultural populations including women and children.

Dr. Inge PetersenInge Petersen, Scientific Director, Centre for Rural Health
peterseni@ukzn.ac.za

Dr. Petersen is the Scientific Director of the Centre for Rural Health and a Research Professor in the School of Nursing and Public Health, College of Health Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal as well as visiting Professor in the Department of Health Service and Population Research, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, Kings College, London. Her research foci are in public mental health, having extensive experience in systems strengthening for scaling up integrated mental health in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); as well more recently health systems strengthening of integrated people-centred health. She has published over 120 peer review publications, 2 books, over 20 book chapters and supervised over 40 PhD and Masters completed dissertations.

Photo of Gabriel Kallah-Dagadu HBNU Mentor at UKZN

Gabriel Kallah-Dagadu, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Ghana & Postdoc Fellow of WASHA Takwimu Health Data Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal
kallahdagadug@ukzn.ac.za

Dr. Gabriel Kallah-Dagadu is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Ghana. Dr. Kallah-Dagadu is a postdoctoral fellow in Health Data Science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (host), and two partner universities: Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, USA, and Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Germany.

He holds a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Cape Coast and an MPhil in Statistics from the University of Ghana. Dr. Kallah-Dagadu joined the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science as a faculty member in September 2014 and has great experience supervising and teaching Statistics, Probability, and Data Science at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His research interests are centered on applied probability, computational statistics, and machine learning with real-life applications to genome sequencing, climate change, nutrition, and health outcomes.