2020 – 2024 Cohort
Raymond Akawire Abotigo, PhD, MPH, BA
Raymond Akawire Aborigo holds a PhD with focus in Global Public Health from MONASH University, Australia. He is a senior researcher and currently the head of Research Coordination and the head of the Social Science and Public Health Department at the Navrongo Health Research Centre. Aborigo has led the implementation of several research projects both in the biomedical and social and behavioural research fields. His current research which is supported by Teva pharmaceuticals and Resolve to Save Lives seeks to use a Nurse-led hypertension care model through HEARTS to integrate care for non-communicable diseases into primary health care in Ghana. He is also collaborating with Patience Afulani at the University of California, San Francisco to research into the drivers of poor person-centered care and to develop and validate tools for measuring the health construct across the pregnancy continuum. The collaboration implemented a facility-based quality improvement curriculum that uses simulation-based training for obstetric and neonatal emergency response in Ghana. The team has secured funding from the NIH to expand its work in the field for the next 5 years.
Aborigo has consulted for several nternational organisations including the INDEPTH Network, WHO, UNICEF, USAID, CRS and CDC-Atlanta. His services have centred on implementation research, evaluation of health interventions, training in research methods and the use of human centred designs. With over 20 years of experience in health research, Aborigo has mentored several young researchers and currently has over 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is an Academic Editor for the PLosOne journal and an Associate Editor for BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.
Larry Akoko, MD
Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences
Chair of Surgery 2015-2018 and recently completed a Fellowship in Surgical Oncology at the Tata Memorial Hospital in India. He is currently the President Elect of the Tanzania Surgical Association. He is strongly committed to Surgical Education, also organized a very effective program providing hydrocelectomy under local anesthesia to treat the complications of filiariasis in “surgical camps’ throughout Tanzania. He is one of the leaders of the current generation of surgeons in East Africa.
Maureen Akolo, PhD, MPH
Maureen Akolo, PhD, MPH is an assistant professor at the Aga Khan University-School of Nursing and Midwifery-Nairobi and a visiting lecturer at Catholic University of Eastern Africa, University of Nairobi and Kenyatta University. She seats on several Committee of Experts at the National HIV program, several research Ethics committees and currently a member of ANAC nominating committee. She is the 2023 award winner of the Global HIV nurse- ANAC.
Akolo has 20 years’ experience as a scientist and a clinical manager for a HIV/STI research center in Nairobi Kenya. The research centre- Partners for Health and development in Africa is an affiliate of University of Manitoba/University of Nairobi. It offers HIV/STI prevention, care and treatment services to over 45,000 female sex workers, 4500 Men who have sex with men and approximately 1400 trans gender people.
She has a bachelor’s degree in Nursing, a master’s degree in Public health (Monitoring and Evaluation), a PhD in Public Health and a Fellowship in Higher Education and Learning (FHEA) from UK.
Ian Shane Asiimwe, MD
Asiimwe Ian Shane is a consultant surgeon and Fistula surgeon, working with Arua regional referral hospital, Uganda, and also serves as a senior lecturer at Kampala International University. Before joining Arua hospital he worked as a specialist general surgeon and fistula surgeon at Hoima regional referral hospital.
He is a PhD student at Makerere University “concept on non-fistulous urine incontinence among women in Uganda”. His area of interest is female urology and has and published several papers on female urine incontinence and obstetric fistula.
He is a member national fistula technical working group (NFTWG), International society of Fistula Surgeons (ISOFS) and a FIGO fellow actively participating not just a fistula surgeon but in many activities that help women with urine and stool incontinence live rewarding lives without stigma.
He has conducted several trainings for nurses, doctors, women advocates to treat and help women with urine and stool incontinence.
Travis Bias, DO, MPH, DTM&H, FAAFP
Travis Bias, DO, MPH, DTM&H, FAAFP, is the Co-Director of the Comparative Health Systems course at the UCSF IGHS and Chief Medical Officer of Clinician Solutions at Solventum, formerly 3M Health Care. He is a board-certified Family Medicine physician, currently practicing telemedicine for SteadyMD. He has previously taught as Visiting Lecturer in Kabarak University’s Family Medicine residency program in Chogoria, Kenya and he has served as Lecturer in the Department of Medicine at Busitema University in Mbale, Uganda through a public-private partnership between the United States Peace Corps, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and Seed Global Health. From 2016 – 2019 he taught at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University as a Professorial Lecturer in courses on Global Health Diplomacy and Comparative Global Health Systems. He enjoys traveling and hiking with his partner, Ashley (QI Advisor at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals), and their new daughter.
Regina Duperval, MD
Kay Mackenson Clinic
Completed her pediatric residency at Hospital Saint Damien in Port-au- Prince in 2018. For the past two years, she has studied and trained extensively in Haiti and Canada to learn about complex management of pediatric chronic diseases and joined Kay Mackenson in January 2020.
Francis Kakooza, PhD
Francis is a molecular microbiologist and global health leader currently serving as the Head of the Global Health Security Department, Infectious Diseases Institute, Makerere University. The GHS department key objective is to strengthen the capacities and capabilities of Ministries of Health in Africa to predict, prevent, detect, respond and recover to public health emergencies. As of April 2024, the GHS department had 136 staff, and 20 projects running in different parts of Africa from 14 different funders valued at approximately $32M in cooperative agreements. The scope includes antimicrobial resistance, laboratory biosafety and biosecurity, epidemic intelligence, disease surveillance & community health, case management, infection prevention and control, vaccines and medical countermeasures, planetary health, water, sanitation and hygiene and health security policy, advocacy and economics. Secondly, under the Africa Centers for Diseases Control led Saving Lives and Livelihoods continental Initiative, Francis is the director of the Implementation Science program that focuses on vaccine-related studies, safety surveillance, and capacity building of National Public Health Institutes in up to 25-member states towards disease outbreak readiness and containment. He is also an honorary lecturer at Makerere University, School of Health Sciences, delivering course modules on global health, pharmaceutical microbiology, and biotechnology, a senior technical member of the Sudan Ebola-Virus sequencing team at the Ministry of Health, Uganda, and a WHO expert for global guidelines development in STIs and antimicrobial resistance. In addition, Francis has over 25 peer-reviewed publications on different global health security themes and presented keynote addresses at the first Uganda National AMR Symposium and the Uganda Pharmaceutical Symposium 2023.
Agustin Ibáñez, Psy. Degree, PhD
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
Dr. AIbáñez is a graduate of the Global Brain Health Institute at UCSF. He continues to work with the Executive Director to establish opportunities in South America, and is in the early stages of establishing sister Institute of Brain Health Sciences in Santiago, Chile to deliver a Spanish language brain health protection program.
Achilles Katamba, MB.ChB, DCH, MSc, PhD
Makerere University
Dr Katamba trained in medicine at Makerere, and earned a PhD in epidemiology and health economics at Case Western as a Fogarty scholar. He is the founder and local lead scientist for the Uganda Tuberculosis Implementation Research Consortium (U-TIRC), a collaboration between the Ugandan TB & Leprosy Program & scientists at Makerere, UCSF, Yale, Johns Hopkins, & LSHTM. Dr. Katamba teaches in the Epidemiology Unit & serves on Uganda’s COVID task force.
Address Malata, BSN, MSN, PhD
Kamuzu College of Nursing
Principal at Kamuzu College, Founding Vice Chancellor of Malawi University for Science and Technology, where she worked to integrate health education into the entire school curriculum. Dr Malat has partnered with UCSF since 2008.
Joel Manyahi, MD, PhD
Dr. Joel Manyahi is a medical doctor who graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He holds a Master of Medicine in Microbiology and Immunology from Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences. He also holds a PhD from the University of Bergen, Norway. He a senior lecturer at Muhimbili University and Allied Sciences and a clinical microbiologist at Muhimbili National Hospital.
For the past 10 years, I have been involved in research on the diagnosis of infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, antimicrobial stewardship, and infection prevention and control. His PhD is focused on antimicrobial resistance among HIV-infected patients in Tanzania. To date, he has more than 35 publications in peer-reviewed journals related to AMR and infectious diseases from low-middle income countries. Over the past seven years, I have been at the forefront of implementing one health antimicrobial resistance surveillance program in Tanzania and building the capacity of the healthcare workforce in Tanzania in diagnosis and prevention and control of infectious diseases. I am also a member of the Tanzania AMR surveillance and research technical working group and the chair of the national AMR Surveillance and research sub-TWG on human health.
Daniel Mwendwa Maweu, BSN, RN, MSN
Daniel Maweu RN, MSN, serves as the co-director of Global Action In Nursing at Partners In Health, which is a global healthcare and social justice organization dedicated to improving the health of underprivileged and marginalized communities. Daniel is a nurse-midwife and reproductive healthcare educator with over ten years of cumulative professional experience in clinical midwifery, clinical mentorship, perioperative nursing, and midwifery education in both Kenya and Liberia.
In his current role, he supports nursing and midwifery workforce development initiatives in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Malawi through training, mentorship, and quality improvement empowerment initiatives. He specializes in midwifery education, curriculum development, coaching, and health system building. Daniel has a proven track record in developing and implementing resilient maternal health systems in midwifery education and mentorship programs. He is dedicated to providing respectful and dignified reproductive health services for all women and their families.
Daniel holds two master’s degrees, one in Nursing with specialization in Midwifery from Mount Kenya University, Kenya, and a Master of Science in Public Health from the University of Stirling, Scotland. Additionally, he has a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Kenyatta University and an advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Global Maternal and Child Health from James Lind Institute, Switzerland.
Louisa Ndunyu, MA, PhD
Dr. Louisa Ndunyu leads several Maseno University-UCSF-KEMRI programs including 1) the Sustainable Development for Improving HIV Health in Kenya (SD4H-K) as a multiple Principal Investigator (mPI). This postgraduate Fellowship Training program is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), alongside other subgrants. 2) The Future of Reproductive Health Research (FOR) Kenya also runs under her leadership as the co-PI. The FOR Training program in qualitative research, mentorship and support for young women is funded by the Hewlett Packard Foundation. 3) The Innovations for Choice and Autonomy (ICAN), a multicountry study project in which she is co-Investigator, and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Louisa, a demographer and population health specialist, is Senior Lecturer and Chair, Department of Public Health at Maseno University, with special interest in reproductive research. Under her leadership, the Department of Public Health aims to be an excellent global leader in public health discovery, innovations, dissemination of knowledge, committed to community service in pursue of Universal Health Coverage for healthy populations. All with the ultimate aim of making a difference in public health training, research, policy and practice. Strengthened collaborations with the UCSF will help leverage resources and catapult the Department to greater heights of international excellence.
Nokuthula Gloria Nkosi, PhD
Nokuthula Gloria Nkosi is a mental health nurse specialist. She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in the Nursing Education Department. She lectures undergraduate nursing students and supervises PhD and MSc students. She coordinated innovation and research in the nursing department. Dr Nkosi’s niche area is mental health promotion using psychosocial interventions. She presented and published her research nationally and internationally and co-authored book chapters. Her research project is currently aimed at standardizing psychosocial interventions for vulnerable populations in poor-resourced communities. She has a private practice that aims at promoting the mental well-being of women during pregnancy. Outside her working time, she is a radio DJ on a health and wellness show.
Saber Perdes, MD, MPH
Saber Perdes, MD, MPH is currently advisor for the grants and contributions division at the Global Affairs Canada and founder of Nezarat Consulting Ltd. Previously, Perdes was advisor to the Afghanistan Minister of Public Health and a part time lecturer of Health Management at Moraa Educational Complex, Kabul Afghanistan.
He is a confident, resourceful, and innovative public health professional with extensive experience in health and development in post-conflict and disaster-affected communities. He has more than 15 years of professional experience in public health, research, management, and leadership in government and Non-Government Organizations. In a voluntary capacity, Perdes has served as a mentor of the ITAPS program, vice president and board member of the Afghanistan Cancer Foundation and International Relations Coordinator at the Afghanistan National Public Health Association.
Perdes holds a Medical Doctorate (MD) from Shaikh Zayed University, Afghanistan, and a Master’s of Public Health from Saint Louis University, United States. He was awarded a United National Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Fellowship in 2008 and a Fulbright Scholarship in 2009. He is fluent in English, Dari, Pashtu and Hindi.
Tony Raj, MBB, MD
St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences
Dean of the SJRI, professor of physiology, head & founder of the division of Medical Informatics. Dr Raj has built capacity and strengthened the institute’s digital health platforms to meet international standards and support health information, e-learning systems and e- data capture systems. Our collaborative adherence study greatly benefitted from his expertise during the development of “Tel-me-box” -a pill box that signals our server when opened. Training the next generation of global health researchers is a priority, through fellowships such as GloCal and MHIRT and informally with students from UCSF and Berkeley. SJRI-UCSF collaboration has resulted in the establishment of a solid joint research and training infrastructure.
Said Iftekhar Sadaat, MD, MPH
Mili Institute of Higher Education
Said Iftekhar Sadaat MD, MPH is currently the deputy head of health programs at the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan and lecturer of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Mili Institute of Higher Education in Afghanistan. He has an MD degree in General Medicine from Nangarhar Medical University in Afghanistan, and also has a Master of Public Health from Kaplan University, USA with one-year epidemiology and biostatistics taught program from Saint Louis University, Missouri, USA. Formerly, he was the director of research and evaluation in the Ministry of Public Health Afghanistan. He has worked in health research, monitoring, and evaluation, and health information systems for 15 years.
Mohammad Sediq, MD, MPH
Mohammad Sediq Hazratzai, MD, MPH – Public Health Institute (PHI) – is a qualified Principal Investigator affiliated with the Public Health Institute (PHI). He has played a key role in promoting health equity and addressing disparities in the health of immigrant and refugee populations. With over a decade of experience in public health research and humanitarian health programs, Sediq currently serves as a visiting professor at the University of California Davis where he teaches refugee health and comparative health systems. He has collaborated with non-profit organizations, IOM (UN Migration Agency), and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health on various projects aimed at improving the health of vulnerable populations, such as refugees, migrants, Injecting Drug Users (IDUs), and HIV high-risk groups. Sediq is also the founding director of Sehat Initiative (SI), a PHI project dedicated to enhancing the health and well-being of refugees from Afghanistan.
Fred Semitala, MMed, MPH, ImS
Makerere University
Dr. Semitala trained in medicine at Makerere, completed an MPH at Berkeley and the Implementation Science Certificate at UCSF. He is the Medical Director of the Mulago HIV/AIDS Clinic the Director of Implementation Research at Makerere’s Joint AIDS Program. He is a co-investigator for a NIH D43 to build capacity in Implementation Science at Makerere. He has been the focal person in studies to streamline TB diagnosis, care & prevention among people living with HIV, as well as improving retention in care.
Hamid Sharifi, PhD, DVM
Hamid Sharifi, PhD is a professor of Epidemiology at Kerman University of Medical Sciences in Iran. He is also the director of the HIV/STI Surveillance Research Center, which is a WHO Collaborating Center for HIV Surveillance, located at KMU. Sharifi obtained his veterinary medicine degree from Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman in 2002 and completed his Ph.D. in Epidemiology at the University of Tehran in 2011.
Sharifi’s research interests focus on drug use and addiction, sexual health, and the epidemiology of infectious diseases, with a special emphasis on HIV, other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and Hepatitis among key populations. He has undertaken numerous projects throughout his career, taking on roles as a Principal Investigator (PI), Co-PI, or Project Manager in countries such as Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
In addition to his research work, Sharifi has also played a mentorship role in guiding and supervising numerous students in the fields of Epidemiology and Public Health, including 15 Ph.D. and 27 Master’s students. He has also taught various courses for Ph.D. and Master’s programs, covering topics such as Principles and Approaches of Epidemiology, Causal Inferences, Cohort Studies, Clinical Trial Studies, Research Methodology, and Infectious Diseases Epidemiology. Sharifi has organized several short courses and workshops related to HIV and hidden populations both in Iran and abroad, covering areas such as population size estimation, cascade analysis, mapping, size estimation, sampling methods of hidden populations, and scientific writing.
Additionally, Sharifi has developed various training materials for the courses he conducted. He participated as a mentee in the Institute’s International Traineeships in AIDS Prevention Studies (ITAPS) at UCSF, where he was mentored by Ali Mirzazadeh and Willi McFarland in 2016. Subsequently, he served as a mentor in the program in 2017 and 2021.
Ali Sié, MD, PhD
Nouna Health Research Centre / National Institute of Public Health
Ali Sié is director, clinical epidemiologist and team leader on “Disease Control” at the Nouna Health Research Centre (CRSN), one of the major research institutions of the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) at the Ministry of Health of Burkina Faso. He is strongly committed to infectious disease research with more emphasis on child survival and also has a growing interest on health system and environment research. He is leading the Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) established since 1992 and member of the INDEPTH network. He is one of the leaders of the current generation of public health research in West Africa.
Krishnamachari Srinivasan, MD
St. John’s Medical College
Head, Div of Mental Health and Neurosciences. Dr. Srini is building a pipeline of global mental health researchers, particularly in the context of stigma and access to care. Beyond his support of trainees at St John’s, he has served as international mentor within MHRIT, Harvard Global Institute, & GloCal. Dr. Srini collaborated on an influential paper describing implementation of an innovative mental health care service delivery called the Collaborative Care Model in India and Nepal, leading to a panel presentation at the NIMH annual conference on Global Mental Health research in 2019, and our current submission of an RO1.
Rachel Thompson, PhD
Rachel Thompson is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Ghana and the Director of Africa Interdisciplinary Research Institute. Her research is situated in the field of ethnography of communication, specifically in the areas of digital media interactions, health communication, and political discourse. She is also interested in understanding the linguistic practices of healthcare professionals on social media platforms in relation to maternal and child healthcare, HIV prevention, treatment and care as well as the discourse surrounding mental health in the Ghanaian culture. She is committed to an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship and conducts her research projects with this in mind. Rachel is interested in capacity building for undergraduate students, graduate students, and early career researchers. Rachel has a deep-seated passion for helping the youth and making a difference in their lives. She is one of the founding directors of the Africa Interdisciplinary Health Conference. Rachel holds a PhD from Griffith University, Australia. She obtained her MPhil and bachelor’s degrees from University of Ghana and University of Cape Coast, respectively.