Professor Isabella Oyier has been appointed as the Deputy Director, Kilifi of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, following the completion of a highly competitive recruitment process conducted by the Programme’s partners: the University of Oxford, Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), and Wellcome. 

Prof. Isabella Oyier, until recently served as Head of the Biosciences Department at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Program (KWTRP). She is also Professor of Molecular Epidemiology, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford; and a Calestous Juma Science Leadership Fellow, a Grand Challenges program that supports outstanding scientists in countries across Africa to strengthen the pan-African R&D ecosystem.

Prof. Oyier’s current research focuses on integrating malaria molecular epidemiology into routine surveillance in Kenya, an initiative that partners with the Division of National Malaria Programme to implement malaria molecular surveillance activities in the country. She co-leads a Wellcome-funded project across the Wellcome Major International Programs (AHRI, CIDRI-A, KWTRP, MLW, MORU and OUCRU), focusing on real-time pathogen tracking of arboviruses (dengue and chikungunya) and antimicrobial resistance (of Klebsiella pneumoniae and Mycobacterium tuberculosis) using genomics surveillance.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prof. Oyier led the COVID-19 testing for the Coastal region of Kenya. KWTRP was a regional COVID-19 genomic surveillance reference lab for Africa CDC and WHO-Afro and she led and coordinated this effort. In addition, she is currently coordinating the scale-up of COVID-19 immunological surveillance in the East Africa region, to determine genetic variants with immune escape potential.