Partnerships in STE(A)M Innovation and Future Africa: A Virtual Symposium
Through a two-day virtual event on November 03–04, 2022, the Africa Office of Harvard Center for African Studies will convene Partnerships in STE(A)M Innovation and Future Africa Symposium. The event will provide a platform to highlight ongoing Harvard-funded and CAS supported STE(A)M research led by Harvard faculty and their Africa-based collaborators; survey findings of the Africa Research, Implementation Science, and Education (ARISE) Network researchers; and feature a panel discussion on the intersection of African Languages and technology.
In vast efforts to tackle a global pandemic, Africa demonstrated that it has capacity to carry out research to address its problems and to contribute scientific solutions to broader global challenges. Research carried out locally in Africa, coupled with international collaborations, provides actionable and sustainable solutions for the continent. The World Bank has advocated that the “economic and social prosperity of countries depend on the state of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).” The symposium will feature research projects that aim to provide a deeper understanding of problems in the African context and seek new discoveries to solve the challenges and advance future development.
While gaining increased attention, the unquestionable value of arts and humanities in STEM, or STE(A)M, requires broader exploration for a deepened understanding. The symposium will highlight some of the outstanding research work done in Africa and in the diaspora to digitize African languages. Featured works will demonstrate how technology could be a solution to preserving African languages in danger of extinction and to using African languages to impact delivery of services including in healthcare, immigration, legal processes, and learning. The symposium will also highlight ongoing efforts to advance STE(A)M education in Africa.
Over the two days, symposium will explore the following thematic areas: (i) Nutrition and Food Insecurity; (ii) Healthcare Delivery; (iii) Effects of COVID-19 on the progress made on other Epidemics, and (iv) Digitization of African Languages and (iv) The importance of integration of Arts in STEM education.
Attendees of the symposium will have an opportunity to engage with the presenters and provide input to ongoing research projects. Each day will feature a keynote address focusing on the importance of partnerships in STEM research in Africa and exploring the integration of the Arts in STEM education.
Registration details:
Date: Thursday, November 3 & Friday, November 4, 2022
Time: 2pm-6pm SAST / 8am-12pm EDT
Event Registration Link: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5Em3eGA3TwO1lpfXEvaskQ
Dr. Rifat Atun
Dr Rifat Atun is Professor of Global Health Systems at Harvard University and the Faculty Chair for the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program.
In 2006-13, Dr. Atun was Professor of International Health Management and Head of the Health Management Group at Imperial College London. In 2008-12 he served as a member of the Executive Management Team of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as the Director of Strategy, Performance and Evaluation Cluster, where he chaired the panel that oversaw investments of around $4billion each year in more than 100 countries.
Professor Atun's research has two major strands. The first examines health systems performance and how design and implementation of health systems reforms impact on outcomes. The second strand of research explores adoption and diffusion of innovations in health systems (e.g., health technologies, disease control programmes, and primary healthcare reforms), and innovative financing in global health. Prof. Atun is a co-Investigator and the joint lead for the innovation work stream at the National Centre for Infection Prevention and Management at Imperial College. He is also a co-Investigator and the Theme Lead for 'Organisational Change, Health Economics and Evaluation' at the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare Associated Infections.
Professor Atun has published more than 400 papers in leading journals including the Lancet, NEJM, Academy of Management Journal, Lancet Global Health, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Lancet Oncology, and Lancet Psychiatry and PLoS Medicine. He has led or has been a commissioner in 12 Lancet Commissions and was a co-author and member of the Advisory Committee for the Editors for Disease Control Priorities (DCP) 3. In 2020, he was recognized by the Web of Science as one of the World's Highly Cited Researchers.
Prof. Atun has worked with more than 30 governments globally and with the World Bank, World Health Organization, and the UK Department for International Development (DfID) to design, implement and evaluate health system reform initiatives. In 1999-2006 he was a member of the UK DfID Resource Centre for Health Systems.
Dr. Atun has led executive education programs and undertaken assignments for major organizations including Novartis, Medtronic, GSK, Pfizer Inc., the Vodafone Group, and Hofmann-La Roche.
Prof. Atun was the Founding Director of the MSc in International Health Management, BSc in Management and Medical Science, and Founding Co-Director of the Masters in Public Health (MPH) Programmes at Imperial College. He has been a founding director and is an active investor in health technology companies operating in areas of digital health, health service delivery, medical diagnostics and biotechnology. He also advises new ventures operating in these areas.
Prof. Atun has served as a member of the MRC (UK) Global Health Group, the US Institute of Medicine Standing Committee on Strengthening Health Systems. He serves as a member of the Research Advisory Committee for the Public Health Foundation of India. He was a member of the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board, the Norwegian Research Council’s Global Health and Vaccination Research Board, as well as the Advisory Committee for WHO Research Centre for Health Development in Japan and the Strategic Technical Advisory Group of the WHO for Tuberculosis. He chaired the WHO Task Force on Health Systems and Tuberculosis Control and in 2009-12 he was the Chair of the STOP TB Partnership Coordinating Board. He is a member of The Longitude Prize Committee, the largest science prize in the world. He is currently serving as a Member of the WHO Regional Director’s Advisory Council on Innovation for Noncommunicable Diseases (the NCD Advisory Council).
Prof. Atun studied medicine at University of London as a Commonwealth Scholar. He subsequently completed his postgraduate medical studies and Masters in Business Administration at University of London and Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners (UK), Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK).
Prof. Mosa Moshabela
Professor Mosa Moshabela, MBChB, M.Med (Family Medicine), MSc (Demography and Health), PhD (Public health) is a Professor of Public Health and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. An esteemed academic and clinician scientist, he held a Wellcome Trust Fellowship (2015 -2018), and was awarded a Ministerial Special Covid-19 Award (2020 - 2021) for Covid-19 Science Communication and Public Engagement.
Prof Moshabela leads the Quality Health Systems and Transformation (QuEST) Center in South Africa, a collaboration with the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, USA, and he is a faculty member in HIV, Infectious Disease and Global Health Research Institute (HIGH IRI) at the University of Washington in St. Louis, USA.
His contribution has primarily been in the improvement of access and quality healthcare to combat infectious diseases, in relation to HIV and TB, and in the areas of health systems, services and policy research. His research focus on implementation science cuts across multiple disciplines, and involves the design, implementation and evaluation of complex interventions in healthcare services and programs, and seeks to improve access, quality and equity in healthcare, for resource-poor settings in sub-Saharan Africa.
He is the chairperson of the Standing Committee on Health in the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), and chairperson of a committee to evaluate the Covid-19 health sector response in SA, commissioned by the National Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. He is also the Health Commissioner to the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal, as one of the seven multi-sector commissioners on the Premier's Provincial Planning Commission.
Globally, he is a member of the international advisory board for the Lancet Healthy Longevity, Lancet commission on synergies between Health Promotion, Universal Healthcare Access and Global Health Security, and the commission of the US National Academies for Science, Engineering and Medicine on the Global Roadmap to Healthy Longevity.
Dr. Mary Mwanyika Sando
Dr. Mary Mwanyika Sando is the Chief Executive Officer of Africa Academy for Public Health. She completed her medical training at the University of Dar es Salaam and her Master of Public Health on Global Health & Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
She has experience on the design and implementation of maternal and child health programs and has acquired capacity to manage clinical trials and implementation science research. Prior to joining AAPH, she worked with UNICEF as the Health System Strengthening specialist which further broadened her skills in linking health policy and planning with program design, implementation and monitoring.
Before working with UNICEF, Dr. Sando led and coordinated the maternal and child health (MCH) programs at Management and Development for Health (MDH). During her tenure, MDH experienced significant growth and expansion of its MCH portfolio beginning with the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) program and later expanding to include other aspects of the wider MCH platform.
Dr. Sando is an advocate for improvement of women’s health and the overall quality of care they receive, which includes the promotion of dignified and respectful care during childbirth. She is an active member and the current president elect for the medical women association of Tanzania (MEWATA). MEWATA is the champion organization on breast and cervical cancer awareness; including early diagnosis and timely treatment in Tanzania.
Dr. Sulemana Watara Abubakari
Sulemana Watara Abubakari is a Principal Research Fellow at the Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC), Ghana. He holds a PhD degree in Population Studies and MPhil degree in Geography & Resource Development, University of Ghana, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography and Economics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Sulemana has distinguished himself from primary school where he was awarded best pupil to university where he was also awarded Vice Chancellor’s award for outstanding doctoral dissertation. His poster presentation was adjudged the best, and he was presented with the young scientist award at 2006 INDEPTH Network Conference in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He headed the Kintampo Health and Demographic Surveillance System (Kintampo HDSS), and now heads the Environmental Health Research of KHRC. Currently, he coordinates a study in all regions of Ghana aimed at reducing household air pollution, activities of malaria vaccine pilot evaluation in three regions of Ghana, and COVID-19 surveys of the Africa Research, Implementation Science, and Education (ARISE) Network in Ghana.
Dr. Emily Smith
Emily R. Smith is an epidemiologist and an assistant professor at The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health in Washington, D.C.. She also holds an appointment as a research associate in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research is focused on generating, analyzing, and interpreting epidemiological data to improve maternal and newborn health and nutrition in low- and middle-income countries. At Harvard and Emory, she has implemented clinic- and population-based research in Tanzania, Bolivia, Rwanda, and the United States. Her methodological expertise includes design and analysis of clinical trials, methods for causal inference with observational data, and meta-analysis.
Dr. Smith is a graduate of the Population and Reproductive Health doctoral program in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She completed her Master of Public Health (MPH) at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. She received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Northwestern University in Biological Anthropology and International Studies.
Dr. Bizu Gelaye
Dr. Bizu Gelaye is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School and The Chester M. Pierce, MD Division of Global Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital. He is an associate member of the Broad Institute’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research Program and Teaching Faculty at the Center for Bioethics in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gelaye’s research makes innovative use of population-based data and biomarkers to understand resilience and risk factors for neuropsychiatric disorders. His work, in collaboration with multidisciplinary researchers, focuses on how trauma affects health across the life course and intergenerationally. Dr. Gelaye’s research also includes a focus on the application of psychometric methods in cross-cultural settings. In addition to research, Dr. Gelaye is a highly regarded mentor preparing outstanding, diverse public health scientists and leaders. He served as program director of the Multidisciplinary International Research Training (MIRT) program for more than 10 years. Currently, he is the program director of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Mississippi Delta Partnership in Public Health Program and the associate director of the Global Initiative for Neuropsychiatric Genetics Education in Research (GINGER) Program.
Dr. Jessica Cohen
Dr. Cohen is a health and behavioral economist whose research uses randomized controlled trials and other rigorous quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the impact of maternal and child health programs and policies, both in the United States and East African countries. Dr. Cohen's research explores the behavioral channels by which health policies translate into health outcomes, with the aim of embedding this evidence into policy design and increasing policy impact. Dr. Cohen has conducted randomized controlled trials to evaluate the impact of incentives, subsidies, information, and decision architecture on health seeking behavior and health outcomes in the domains of malaria and maternal health from the prenatal through the postnatal period. Her research uses concepts from economics and psychology to explore drivers of critical health behaviors including maternity care seeking, postpartum contraception, and child nutrition. She also has used various quasi-experimental designs to evaluate the impact of large health policy and health system changes on population health, including malaria pharmaceutical subsidy policies and maternity provider payment models. Current work explores drivers of maternity provider behavior, including quality of care during labor and delivery and provision of postpartum contraception.
Dr. Cohen's work has been published widely in top economics and public health journals and has been referenced in major national and international publications. She has won a mentorship award and a teaching award from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research on subsidy policies for insecticide treated nets was deemed by Vox as a top social science paper of the decade. Dr. Cohen was a member of the WHO Global Malaria Program's Technical Expert Group on Surveillance, Monitoring and Evaluation and has served on NIH expert review panels related to implementation science and impact evaluation.
Dr. Cohen received her bachelor's degree in Economics from Wesleyan University and her PhD in Economics from MIT, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.
Ms. Anneka Wickramanayake
Anneka Wickramanayake is Director of Research, Evaluation and Design at Jacaranda Health, overseeing research projects, data and analytics, and product management. She specializes in research and evaluation methods. Anneka brings experience in development research and monitoring and evaluation, having worked in both the private and public sectors. Prior to joining Jacaranda Health, she worked in Ethiopia as Research Director for Laterite, managing full-cycle research consultancies. Before that, she was Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for the American Refugee Committee in Rwanda, leading the M&E strategy and assessing the standard of health care provided. She also has experience in clinical research and programming addressing malnutrition-related diabetes in Uganda and India. Anneka's academic background is in public health, having received an MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Prof. Phyllis Kanki
Phyllis Kanki is the Mary Woodard Lasker Professor of Health Sciences at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She has worked in West Africa since 1984, where her research in Senegal provided the initial characterization of HIV-2, demonstrated reduced virulence, transmission and progression to disease and interactions with HIV-1 subtypes. In 2000, she founded the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN), with a $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation modeled after the Senegal research collaboration. She led Harvard’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program supporting prevention, care and HIV antiretroviral therapy in Nigeria, Botswana, and Tanzania (2005-2013). In Nigeria, she developed an electronic medical record system that continues to provide real time access to data on several hundred thousand patients on therapy. She reinforced the capacity of over 22 laboratories in Nigerian university teaching hospitals to provide state of the art HIV diagnosis and monitoring.
Her long-term research collaborations in West Africa have also incorporated training and research capacity building. She served as the co-principal investigator of the Harvard AIDS International Training Research Program (1988-2013) and currently leads the Harvard component for NIH Medical Education Partnership Initiatives MEPI) at the University of Ibadan (MEPI-J), Jos (STAMINA) and Lagos (BRAINS). These programs seek to enhance research capacity for junior faculty. She has Honorary Professorships at the University of Ibadan and University of Jos in Nigeria.
Current research studies in Nigeria include a clinical trial of point of care viral testing for ART therapy. She has also studied the epidemiology and immunopathogenesis of Ebola, Zika, dengue and Chikungunya virus infections. Recently, she is studying the immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 in healthcare workers and vaccine recipients in Lagos, Nigeria.
Prof. Anne E. Goldfeld
Anne E. Goldfeld, M.D. is Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Senior Investigator in the Program of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, at Boston Children’s Hospital, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Physician in the Division of Infectious Disease at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and founder of the Global Health Committee. Fusing molecular immunology studies in her lab with developing delivery of care networks in Cambodia and Ethiopia, her work has led to new understanding of the immune response to infection and to new global treatment strategies and access to care for TB and HIV.
Dr. Daniel Meressa
Daniel Meressa M.D. is the medical coordinator of the Global Health Committee (GHC)’s program in Ethiopia and of the treatment program for drug resistant TB at St. Peter’s Specialized Tuberculosis Hospital in Addis Ababa, where he also serves as Senior Specialist in Internal Medicine. With GHC, he coordinated the initiation of the first treatment program for drug resistant TB in Ethiopia and its scale-up, playing a critical role in the development of national and international TB treatment guidelines and training manuals on DR-TB. He has served as a Principal Investigator for the multi-country STREAM clinical trial, which has led to shortening DR-TB treatment regimens globally and to new WHO recommendations. Dr. Meressa received his medical degree at the Gondar University College of Medicine in northwestern Ethiopia and completed an Internal Medicine Residency at Black Lion Hospital and Addis Ababa University.
Prof. Christian Happi
Christian T. Happi is a Professor of Molecular Biology and Genomics and the Director of the World Bank-funded African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), Redeemer’s University, Ede, Nigeria.
Following his first degree from the University of Yaounde, Cameroon, he proceeded to the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he obtained Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Molecular Parasitology. He completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard University in molecular biology and genomics of malaria.
He is passionate about building the capacity of young Africans, preparing them to use advanced genomics tools and techniques for high-impact research for Africans and for humanity. He leads the ACEGID team and partners in working with national health institutions in Nigeria and other West African countries on surveillance, diagnostics and management of infectious diseases. Christian diagnosed the first case of Ebola in Nigeria in 2014 within 6 hours, a feat that helped in the early containment of the disease in Nigeria. In 2020, his team sequenced the first genome of the SARS-Cov-2, causing Covid-19 in Africa, within 72 hours of receiving the sample.
His accolades include the Merle A. Sande Health Leadership Award; the Award of Excellence in Research from the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities; the 2019 Human Genome Organization (HUGO) Africa Prize, the 2020 Bailey K. Ashford Medal; the 2020 Bailey K Ashford Medal of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene; the 2021 Al Sumait Prize for Africa Development by the Kuwait Foundation for Advancement in Sciences, among others.
Dr. Roger Shapiro
Dr. Shapiro is a Professor in Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. He has worked for over two decades in Botswana, performing clinical trials and nationwide surveillance to improve health outcomes for HIV-infected pregnant women and their children. His current research focus is to understand the relationship between antiretroviral drugs used in pregnancy and adverse birth outcomes, and to study novel diagnostic and treatment strategies for HIV-infected children.
In Botswana, Dr. Shapiro has pioneered new strategies to prevent vertical HIV transmission, provided early data to support antiretroviral treatment strategies that were safe enough to allow breastfeeding, and evaluated risks for morbidity and mortality among HIV-exposed infants. He is currently principal investigator or co-principal investigator for research programs that perform: 1) surveillance at 18 sites in Botswana evaluating the relationship between antiretroviral therapy and adverse birth outcomes, including congenital abnormalities; 2) a multi-site study evaluating the safety, efficacy, viral reservoir reduction, and immunologic profiles following very early antiretroviral treatment initiation for HIV-infected infants; and 3) a clinical trial evaluating two broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (bNAbs) as a novel treatment strategy for HIV-infected children. He supports additional research in Botswana as the principal investigator of a Fogarty award, through a successful partnership between Harvard-affiliated hospitals and the Scottish Livingstone Hospital in Botswana, and as a research mentor bridging Boston and Botswana sites. Dr. Shapiro’s research has been used to direct health policy in Botswana and internationally, and through this work he has served as a scientific advisor to the World Health Organization for the development of guidelines for prevention of vertical HIV transmission, pediatric antiretroviral treatment, and infant feeding.
Dr. Sikhulile Moyo
Sikhulile Moyo is Deputy Laboratory Director at the Botswana-Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP) and a research associate with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research interests are focused on characterisation of acute and primary HIV-1 subtype C infection, HIV reservoir estimation studies, molecular epidemiology of HIV-1C, CMV and HBV infection, drug resistance, dynamics of viral evolution, design and evaluation of cross-sectional methods for estimating HIV incidence, including improved accuracy and incorporating analysis of HIV diversity and estimation of transmission time into multi-assay algorithms. He oversees the design and implementation of laboratory components of clinical trials, observational and surveillance studies and mentoring of students. Moyo is a member of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG)/International Maternal Paediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) laboratory technologist committee and serves as co-Vice Chair. He has made a number of significant contributions in the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission studies and studies that have informed birth outcomes, health of HIV-exposed uninfected infants, surveillance of HIV incidence and monitoring of HIV mutations associated with drug resistance.
Dr. Millogo Ourohiré
A graduate of the University of Ouagadougou in 2004, Dr Millogo served for 6 years in a health district in the country. He held the position of District Medical Officer and effectively coordinated the implementation of various public health interventions, their monitoring and evaluation. He has a good knowledge of the country's health system, its organisation, functioning, strengths, and weaknesses. He joined the Nouna Health Research Centre in 2011 and obtained his PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Basel through the Swiss Tropical Institute of Public Health. Dr Millogo is the head of the scientific and technical department of the Nouna Health Research Centre. He has coordinated the implementation of several research projects at the Nouna Health Research Centre on maternal and child health and adolescent health. He has also conducted several expert activities in the field of malaria and neglected tropical diseases. He also has a solid background in statistics, particularly Bayesian statistics, and teaches statistics at local universities. He is a member of a working group that evaluated the economic impact of COVID-19 in Burkina Faso.
Dr. Ilana Cliffer
Ilana Cliffer is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in the Global Health and Population department. Ilana received her PhD from the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and her MPH from Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. Her primary research interests include food systems-nutrition linkages and global maternal and child health, with a specific focus on how contextual and environmental factors influence nutrition and health status. Ilana’s current projects include meta-analyses to investigate dietary and psychosocial factors related to gestational weight gain among women in low- and middle- income countries, addressing anemia among adolescents in Burkina Faso and Zanzibar, and scoping review of innovative food systems metrics. Past projects have focused on the use of longitudinal data to assess the timing of growth faltering among young children, environmental influencers of growth, and cost-effectiveness analyses of supplementary feeding products.
Prof. Angela Unna Chukwu
Prof. Chukwu received her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Ibadan. Her research focus on the development and integration of innovative statistical approaches to understanding and enhance the applications in Public Health, clinical research and the life sciences. She is actively engaged in research, teaching and supervision of dissertations on Statistics to both the undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Ibadan and partner institutions in Africa.
Prof. Chukwu is actively engaged in research and project collaborations with leaders at national and international partner institutions, on a broad range of applications of Statistics and implementation interventions for public health and the life sciences. Her collaborations with national and international partners include research projects, teaching, facilitating training workshops, proposal development; scientific writing and data management. Her research and teaching activities include Mathematical Statistics, Demography and Biostatistics. Prof. Chukwu is the head of the working group providing technical context on projects and initiatives at the University of Ibadan Research Foundation (UI-Research Foundation) and is currently the Principal Investigator on the UI-Research Foundation partnership with 7 African Institutions and the Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health that constitutes the African Research on Implementation Sciences and Education (ARISE) Network. Prof. Chukwu is a visiting scholar at the World Bank-sponsored Africa Center of excellence in Data Science at the University of Rwanda. She is a fellow of the McGoldrick Professional Development Program in Public Health, a platform of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the ARISE network. She is currently developing a platform for active engagement of capacities and competencies in analytical modelling on a “Numbers in Life Initiative”.
Dr. Sachin Shinde
Sachin Shinde holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. He also holds a Master of Public Administration in Health Economics and Policy Analysis from New York University in New York City, USA, and a Master of Arts in Psychology from the University of Pune, India. He currently works as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Harvard T H School of Public Health in the USA and previously worked with multiple non-government organizations in India. In his work, he focuses primarily on understanding health risk behaviors among adolescents and developing and evaluating school- and community-based interventions to address them. In addition to being trained in both quantitative and qualitative research methods, Sachin has about 15 years of research experience in planning, executing, monitoring, and managing health and development projects with state, national, and international governments, NGOs, grassroots organizations, and others.
Dr. Mashavu Yussuf
Dr. Mashavu is an Epidemiologist working as a Research Program Manager at the Africa Academy for Public Health (AAPH). She has a background in dental surgery and experience in clinical management of patients and public health research. Dr. Mashavu’s research areas of interest include nutrition, Maternal, Child and adolescent health, as well as non-communicable diseases. She is well experienced in proposal development; designing and implementing data collection; data management and analysis; report write-up and dissemination of research findings. Having worked as both a dental clinician and public health scientist, she hopes to continue conducting research and evaluations aimed to address key public health priority areas especially for Adolescents.
Dr. Moeketsi Joseph Makhema
Dr. Makhema is a Practicing Internal Medicine Physician and is the CEO of the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP), He Provides strategic leadership, manages and supervises all initiatives of the BHP. He oversees grant funded research and training awards from a number of different funders. He is the Co- PI of the BHP/HSPH Clinical Trials Unit, providing oversight and clinical mentorship for all CTU trials. He is Site PI for HPTN and the COVID-19 Prevention Trials Network and other COVID-19 related research projects. He advises on the selection of the BHP clinical research portfolio. He has published and been involved in over 100 publications. He is interested in community HIV prevention initiatives, translational policy issues, and health systems strengthening.
Prof. Kathleen Kahn
Professor Kathleen Kahn is personal professor in the School of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand; and senior scientist in the MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt). Her research interests include health transitions; burden of disease assessments; child health and development; integrated chronic care systems; and interventions to reduce risk factors for metabolic disease. Since the inception of the Agincourt health and socio-demographic surveillance system in 1992, Kahn has led work on mortality and cause of death measurement, using verbal autopsy to track transitions over a period of dramatic socio-political change and the HIV epidemic.
Dr. Mohlopheni Jackson Marakalala
Dr Mohlopheni Jackson 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.
Mohlopheni 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 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.
Dr. Shahin Lockman
Dr. Lockman is an infectious-disease trained clinician and has led clinical investigation related to HIV in collaboration with colleagues in Botswana since 1996. One of her research focus areas is the safety and efficacy of antiretroviral drugs used for HIV treatment and prevention among pregnant and postpartum women, including through clinical trials in pregnancy and studies of neurodevelopment of antiretroviral-exposed children. Dr. Lockman mentors early-stage investigators on a range of clinical research projects in Botswana. She is joint PI of the Botswana Clinic al Trials Unit at the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (conducting ACTG, IMPAACT, and HPTN network trials), and co-chairs workshops and a working group led by the World Health Organization that focuses on accelerating ethical research of new HIV agents during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Ms. Rooweither Mabuya
Rooweither Mabuya is a Language Researcher at the South African Centre for Digital Resources (SADiLaR). Her research interests lie in the systematic creation of relevant digital text, speech and multi-modal resources related to the development of isiZulu and to promote the use of Digital Humanities related methods and tools within the isiZulu research community. She wants to play a part in the development of isiZulu to be a language of administration, teaching and learning, research and innovation.
Prof. John Mugane
John M. Mugane is Professor of the Practice of African Languages and Cultures and the Director of the African Language Program at Harvard University. Prof. Mugane is a linguist whose primary interest and work is on the language question in the study of Africa having to do with the voice and visibility of Africans in intellectual production, professional praxis, as theory makers, discoverers and innovators. Mugane is a field linguist and grammarian that studies language learning in the African spirit of Ubuntu. He is the Founding Director of the African language Program at Harvard which teaches more than two dozen languages a year using instruction and pedagogies suitable for teaching poorly resourced languages of Africa. Mugane also does work on African languages in the disciplines and professions for which he, together with African colleagues have in the pre and post COVID years established and convened annual conferences at Harvard, Bamako, Conackry and Nairobi. Prof. Mugane has authored numerous peer reviewed papers, and written several books and book chapters. His latest book is The Story of Swahili by Ohio University Press (See The Conversation). Together with a team of others, Prof Mugane is currently, working on Thiomi-Lugha project which is a Natural Language Processing initiative for Africa’s languages in the field of Artificial Intelligence whose aim is to make African environments (courtrooms, classrooms, hospital rooms, politics, entrepreneurial spaces, religious spaces and the like ) linguistically accessible among Africans themselves and the rest of the world.
Dr. Paul Azunre
Paul Azunre holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT and has served as a Principal Investigator on several DARPA research programs. He founded Algorine Inc., a Research Lab dedicated to advancing AI/ML and identifying scenarios where they can have a significant social impact. Paul also co-founded Ghana NLP, an open source initiative focused on using NLP and Transfer Learning with Ghanaian and other low-resource languages. He also serves as Director of Research at Dun & Bradstreet, a company helping businesses manage supply chain risk and other business analytics challenges. He is the author of the recently published book "Transfer Learning for NLP" by Manning Publications.
Dr. Vukosi Marivate
Dr Vukosi Marivate is the ABSA UP Chair of Data Science at the University of Pretoria. Vukosi works on developing Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence methods to extract insights from data. A large part of his work over the last few years has been in the intersection of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. Vukosi's work in this area focuses on techniques to improve tools for and availability of data for local languages or low resource languages. He currently serves as a chief investigator on the Masakhane NLP project (https://www.masakhane.io/ ) and on the steering committee of the Lacuna Fund (https://lacunafund.org/). As part of his vision for Data Science, Vukosi is interested in Data Science for Social Impact (https://dsfsi.github.io/), using local challenges as a springboard for research. In this area, Vukosi has worked on projects in science, energy, public safety and utilities. Vukosi is a co-founder of the Deep Learning Indaba, the largest Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence workshop on the African continent, aiming to strengthen African Machine Learning
Ms. Adetola Salau
Adetola Salau is a social innovator and educator passionate about applying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) skills to break the cycle of poverty in Africa, and most especially Nigeria. She is driven by the desire to prepare students in Africa for the future and does this by teaching them how to innovate solutions that will propel their economic prosperity.
She has a B.Sc in Chemistry (Honors) (Fordham), an M.Sc in Engineering Management, and another M.Sc in Chemical Engineering. Both are from Syracuse University. She is currently studying for a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction and the Science of Learning from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
She was selected to participate in the 2018 Spring Cohort of the MIT Innovation and Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. She is part of a global focus group at the Smithsonian Science Education Center relating to STEM Education for Sustainable Development (STEM4SD.) She is a Moving Worlds Institute Fellow.
Adetola is the author of ten books on STEM education, including ‘Re-engineering Minds for Innovative Thinking’ and ‘Future Readiness in Education, and is also a contributor to several journals and opinion eds.
She is also the recipient of several scholarships and awards, including International Internship University’s Africa award for Excellence (2022) GSE Dean’s Scholarship for Educational Diversity and Excellence, 2019 -2020; Ambassador of STEM Award (2017); African Quality Award – in recognition of achievement and immense contribution to Human Capital Development (2017)– International Summit of Leaders, April (2018); Award of Excellence – Teachers are the Future Conference (2019).
She began her career as a public school teacher in New York, teaching mathematics. In 2016, she founded Carisma4U Educational Foundation as a way of advocating for STEM education. Her organization organizes STEM education programs, such as boot camps and outreaches, to help young people embrace STEM subjects as critical tools for improving lives and driving development. Most of these free programs are targeted towards children in low-income communities, especially girls, who would ordinarily not be able to afford such.
In January 2020, Adetola was appointed as the Senior Special Assistant on Education to the Executive Governor of Lagos State, Nigeria. In her role, she partners with stakeholders in various settings to solve challenges in the education space, particularly by infusing STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) into the academic curriculum. She also mobilizes and oversees training teams that deliver STEAM training to teachers. This also includes overseeing and designing training programs for school practitioners and multidisciplinary teams related to the design, implementation, and evaluation of STEM practices.
Dr. David Moinina Sengeh
Dr. David Moinina Sengeh is the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education and Chief Innovation Officer for the Directorate of Science, Technology, and Innovation of the Government of Sierra Leone. He is a senior TED Fellow.
He also launched the Education Innovation Challenge after learning that for a period of four years, not a single high schooler from his hometown region of Pujehun had obtained good enough grades for university. Today, that $1.5 million fund has grown into the $18 million Education Outcomes Fund.
Prior to his appointment as Sierra Leone’s Chief Innovation Minister and Education Minister, he was with IBM (in Nairobi and Johannesburg), applying data analytics to questions of public health. He holds an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from Harvard University. He also completed a PhD at MIT’s Media Lab with research focused on improving the comfort and ease-of-manufacture of prosthetic limbs. He also has passions in music production and fashion design.