I am a medical doctor passionate about establishing and developing personalised genetically driven solutions in a developing country.  In November 2016 I was appointed as the Research Clinician on a NIH-funded international collaborative project (ResisTB), which aimed to identify genetic variants that may protect persons living with HIV from becoming infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). We identified a unique cohort of persons living with HIV who despite residing in high tuberculosis (TB) incidence environments, test persistently negative for tests inferring Mtb infection and do not develop TB (HITTIN). 

In 2019 I was awarded a South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Clinician Researcher MD PhD Scholarship in Clinical /Health Research, as well as a European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) Career Development Fellowship. My PhD entitled ‘Neutrophils as effector cells in resistance to Mycobacterium tuberculosis in HIV-infected persons’ was completed in 2021. I explored the gene expression differences between Mtb infection responses in neutrophils from HITTIN compared to neutrophils from persons with so called latent Mtb infection using bulk RNA sequencing. With the PhD I was able to span the divide between clinical and basic sciences.