F. H. A. Osier

My expertise is in malaria where I believe we can “Make Malaria History” through vaccination. I previously led two core teams of over 25 scientists across KEMRI–Wellcome, Kenya and Heidelberg University Hospital, Germany. Our projects focused on creating highly effective malaria vaccines through vaccine candidate discovery, identifying immune correlates of protection and unravelling important mechanisms underlying antibody-dependent protection. We designed an innovative custom protein microarray KILchip©, a first of its kind in Africa. We built a SMART network of partners that enabled us to assemble 10,000 samples from across Africa to probe our chip, the largest study of this nature. We created a paradigm shift in the understanding of the mechanisms that underpin protective immunity to malaria. I am Past President of the International Union of Immunological Societies (> 60,000 members globally) – the first African and only second woman in this role. I have won multiple prestigious prizes including the Royal Society Pfizer, the Sofja Kovalevskaja and the UKRI-MRC/DFID African Research Leader Awards. I am a TED Fellow, a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences and the The World Academy of Sciences. I serve on Boards and Expert Committees at the WHO, Wellcome, UKRI, MVI-PATH & BactiVac, and have a global footprint as a keynote & motivational speaker. I am an Official #TOGETHERBAND Ambassador for the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health & Well-being. I am passionate about emerging African scientists as key agents of change, delivering the health interventions our continent urgently needs.