Biography

Ally Olotu is KEMRI-Wellcome Trust affiliate and works with Ifakara Health Institute in Bagamoyo, Tanzania. He has an MD degree from the University of Dar es salaam and DPhil in Clinical Medicine from the University of Oxford, UK. He currently heads the Department of Interventions and Clinical Trials at Ifakara Health Institute, and he is an adjunct faculty at the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology teaching the Master’s course in Public Health Research. His interest is in the epidemiology of malaria and clinical trials evaluating the public health interventions against malaria and other infectious diseases in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). His work includes phase I, II and III evaluations of pre-erythrocytic, second generation blood-stage and transmission blocking vaccines. He is also interested in understanding the vaccine correlates of immune protection and factors that could influence the vaccine immunogenicity and efficacy. He has led malaria vaccines trials in multiple African countries including Kenya, Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania. His scientific contribution includes the understanding of safety, long term efficacy and immunogenicity of the candidate malaria vaccine, RTS,S in young African children. In 2017, he was awarded an MRC African Research Leadership fellowship to work on a second-generation malaria vaccine candidate RH5 administered using viral vectors in Tanzanian children and infants in collaboration with Prof Simon Draper from the University of Oxford.