Immunology
Summary
The Immunology Impi is a collection of MSc and PhD students, along with postdoctoral fellows, assistant, associate and full Professors. The Impi has particular strengths in the immunology of TB, HIV and helminth infections, although there is also immunological work going on within the Impi on malaria and a number of other human and veterinary diseases.
The Impi is an open forum where expertise can be sought for any given project, from MSc project right up to full international Fellowship or Project proposal. Our aim is to help bring through the next generation of young, bright and enthusiastic Ugandan scientist to become the next leader in their chosen field.
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
The BCB Impi is led by MUII fellows and alumni Jonathan Kayondo, Deo Ssemwanga and John Kitayimbwa (among others!). MUII offers travel grants to Centre members, and bioinformatics was first supported by travel grants for international training. The core objective is to foster development of bioinformatics and computational biology expertise within MUII-plus and affiliates through training courses and research collaborations. Common and specialized software has been set up to run various next generation sequencing (NGS) applications including Illumina sequence data QA/QC, alignment, assembly, and mapping; variant calling (SNPs and HIVDR mutations); and phylogenetic analysis.
Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health
The Impi was initiated in January 2016 at a session organised as part of the activities to launch MUII-plus. It is led by Dr Annettee Nakimuli, one of the first cohort of MUII PhD fellows, who is now a MUII+ Group Leader and PhD supervisor, and head of the Makerere College of Health Sciences Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The Impi now has about 20 regular members. A MUII+ Endeavour Award has been made to support the Impi activities, including a strategic planning meeting in January 2018. Impi members have registered success in funding applications, including further NURTURE and THRiVE2 PhD fellowships as well as research grant funding.