Understanding malaria infection dynamics

This student project is available for Masters and PhD candidates and will develop skills in genetics, epidemiology, computational data analysis, and will involve work with international collaborators.

Genetic epidemiology of the Plasmodium falciparum reservoir of infection in Bongo District, Ghana

During my PhD I investigated the genetic epidemiology of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in Bongo District, Ghana in the laboratory of Professor Karen Day. I discovered that residents of all ages harbored infections that were genetically diverse and structured to ensure lifelong carriage of parasites. The findings from my PhD have supported the development of a novel malaria surveillance tool called the “varcode” that can be applied to genetically fingerprint parasites based on variant antigen genes.

Applying the varcode for malaria outbreak surveillance in Ecuador

This collaborative project aims to describe the genomic epidemiology of continued disease transmission of P. falciparum in Ecuador after considerable progress towards elimination in previous years. By applying novel genetic tools, we aim to better understand factors underlying continued transmission after an outbreak in Ecuador by investigating parasite microevolution and transmission dynamics to inform whether malaria cases in Ecuador are locally-acquired or imported from neighboring countries.