Dr. Akorli is a Postdoctoral Fellow (2016-2019) at the DELTAS Africa funded West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) and a Research Fellow at the Department of Parasitology, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR). She is also a fellow of the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) (2017-2018). She holds a BSc degree in Zoology from the University of Ghana and, a PhD in Evolutionary Genetics from the University of Cambridge, UK. Dr. Akorli has broad interests in mosquito-borne disease and Neglected Tropical Disease research. She aims to contribute to understanding host-vector-parasite interactions by applying the in-depth information that can be obtained from using genomic tools. Her current projects under the WACCBIP and CAPREx Fellowships investigate interactions between environment, mosquito vectors, symbionts, human host and mosquito-borne parasites, to increase knowledge and advance efforts in new strategies for disease control in endemic settings. She is also currently a co-investigator on the NIH-NIAID-funded Tropical Medicine Research Centre grant award at NMIMR.
Dr. Kusi is an Immunologist and a part-time lecturer in Biochemistry at the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP). He is also a Research Fellow with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR). Dr. Kusi has postgraduate training in Biochemistry from the University of Ghana and graduated with a PhD in Medicine (Vaccine Immunology) from Leiden University Medical Centre, in The Netherlands, in 2012, based on work he did at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in Rijswijk, in The Netherlands. He undertook postdoctoral training between 2012 and 2014 at NMIMR on the development of sero-epidemiological models for predicting malaria transmission intensity in disease endemic areas. His research interests include identification of immunodominant T cell epitopes in Plasmodium antigens for vaccine design and the identification of antibody correlates of immunity against clinical malaria in children.
WACCBIP is proud to be associated with Drs. Akorli and Kusi.
