Mayimuna Nalubega
PhD Student
mayimuna.nalubega@qimrberghofer.edu.au
CAREER HISTORY
Mayimuna joined the Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration (IDRC), Uganda in 2010 as a laboratory scientist working on clinical trials that are focused on novel strategies to prevent malaria and improve maternal-child health in Africa (PROMOTE) and the Project for Resistance, Immunology, Surveillance and Modelling of Malaria (PRISM). She was actively involved in immunology studies which were investigating the effect of in utero malaria exposure and chemoprevention on the development of anti-malarial immunity in childhood. In 2017, Mayimuna joined the University of Manchester for a Master’s of science degree in Medical Microbiology which she completed in 2018 and returned to IDRC to work on projects testing non-sputum-based biomarkers for diagnosis of tuberculosis. She later resumed malaria worked in 2019 on the project, Malaria in Uganda Systems Immunology and Computational Analysis of Longitudinal data (MUSICAL). Mayimuna is currently a PhD student in Michelle Boyle’s Human Malaria Immunology Lab at QIMR Berghofer where she is undertaking a project studying the longevity of anti-parasitic and tolerogenic immune responses to malaria in humans.
CURRENT APPOINTMENTS
- PhD student Human Malaria Immunology Laboratory
ORCID NUMBER
CURRENT AREA OF RESEARCH
The Human Malaria Immunology Lab’s research is focused on identifying cellular mechanisms that drive the induction of protective humoral responses to human infection. The group primarily focuses on Plasmodium parasite infection, the causative parasite of malaria using a human cohort of experimental and natural infection to understand immune development. Mayimuna’s project investigates the longevity of anti-parasitic and tolerogenic immune responses to malaria in humans, exploring the effect of interruptions in exposure on the development of immune responses and identifying responses required for long term protection against malaria.
The key research areas;
- Quantifying the rate of decay of functional antibody responses following malaria transmission disruption.
- Identify mechanisms of memory B and T cell waning across different age groups
- Quantifying the rate of decay of tolerogenic responses, including tolerogenic Vδ2+ T cells and monocytes in different age groups
AWARDS RECOGNITION
- The Best Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Sciences Graduate 2016- Convocation Award of Mbarara University of Science and Technology – Uganda
- The Equity and Merit scholarship by the University of Manchester
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
- 2018: Master of Science degree Medical Microbiology
- 2016: Bachelor of Medical laboratory Sciences-