At the start of the 2022-23 academic year Reuben College welcomed two new Fellows into the Reuben community as part of our Global Research Fellowship initiative. The Fellowships form an important component of the College’s vision of building a community of people and practice that has diversity at its heart.
The Fellowships provide University of Oxford academics based in Kenya with annual funding to travel to and stay in Oxford. In Michaelmas term 2022 we were delighted to welcome the following academics from the KEMRI-Wellcome Research Programme into these posts:
- Samuel Akech – Principal Investigator at the KEMRI/Wellcome Trust Programme and Honorary Lecturer at the Department of Paediatrics (University of Nairobi, Kenya)
- Isabella Oyier – Associate Professor and the Head of the Biosciences Department at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme; Calestous Juma Fellow
While in Oxford, Isabella and Sam will be fully immersed in the life of the College and the wider Oxford academic community. We look forward to growing the College through the valuable contribution of these Fellows.
The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)-Wellcome Trust Research Programme is a partnership between the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the Wellcome Trust and the University of Oxford, which was formally established in 1989. The Programme has grown from a small group to a facility hosting over 100 research scientists and 700 support staff working across Kenya, Uganda and the region.
The aim of the tri-partite partnership is to expand Oxford and Kenya’s capacity to conduct multidisciplinary research that is strong, sustainable and internationally competitive. There are two key principles underpinning the research work which resonate with the ethos of Reuben College:
- to build strong and sustainable, internationally competitive, national and regional research capacity;
- to work in a way that facilitates integration and cross-fertilisation of scientific disciplines, from basic biology, clinical and operational research to social science.
The KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme includes three hubs, with the main hub in coastal Kilifi, an hour’s drive from Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa. The Kilifi hub is based in the main County Referral Hospital, serving over half a million residents and linking basic studies with molecular laboratories to clinical applications with local relevance.
