Download File

Visting Scientist Grantee
Rebecca N Nsubuga is a Senior Scientist (Statistician/Modeller) at the MRC/UVRI
Uganda Research Unit on AIDS and a visiting professor at Hasselt University, Belgium.
Her career with MRC/UVRI spans over eight years of mathematical modelling of
HIV/AIDS epidemic and statistical analysis of longitudinal cohort data as well as crosssectional data. She was acting head of Statistics section in 2015/2016. Dr. Nsubuga’s
research interest is in: statistical analysis and mathematical modelling of infectious
disease data; in particular HIV/AIDS epidemic; genetics, genomics and Bioinformatics
as well as Biometry. She is also passionate about teaching and capacity building. She was a lecturer,
for over ten years, in the Department of Mathematics, Makerere University.
Dr. Nsubuga holds a PhD from The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, a Master of Science in
Biostatistics degree from Limburgs Universitair Centrum (Now Hasselt University), Belgium and a
Bachelor of Science in Mathematics degree from Makerere University. She is a member of the Uganda
Mathematical Society, the International Biometric Society and Mengo Hospital Research Ethics
Committee.
Travel Grantee
Sheila Nabweyambo is a Laboratory Scientist working the Translational
Research laboratory at the Infectious Diseases Institute. Working in the
Translational Research Laboratory has taught me advanced practical
techniques in immunology, microbiology, molecular biology and
pharmacology such as flowcytometry, polymerase chain reaction assays,
ELISA and ELISPOT assays, HPLC, bacterial culture and drug susceptibility
testing. Sheila was lead scientist on a research collaboration between IDI
and Emory University entitled; “The molecular signature of Influenza
vaccination in HIV-infected people” in 2013 and in 2014 was lead scientist
on a laboratory survey of bacterial infections in blood and their antibiogram
among patients attending the IDI clinic.
Sheila holds a Master of Science in Immunology and Clinical Microbiology
and BSc in Biomedical laboratory technology from Makerere University. For
my Master’s thesis I investigated the diagnostic performance of an in-house PCR assay compared to
the conventional wet mount microscopy for the diagnosis of Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) infection in
women. My choice for this topic was due to the high incidence of TV infection which is not considered
of public health importance in Uganda, yet it is associated with an 2-3 fold increase in the risk of
promoting HIV sexual transmission in women - this particular work indicated that wet-mount
microscopy as a TV test tool missed almost three quarters of infection – an unacceptable deficit in TV
diagnosis. This work was accepted for an oral presentation at the 8th UCSF Africa collaboration
scientific symposium in January 2016 and now a manuscript is under review by the BMC journal.