Damalie Nakanjako (MBChB, MMED, PhD), Professor of Medicine,School of Medicine, Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MakCHS) and senior research scholar at the Infectious Diseases Institute where she gives scientific leadership to the translational laboratory. She holds a masters’ degree in internal medicine from MakCHS, a doctoral degree in Biomedical sciences from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and post-doctoral training under the Makerere University-UVRI Infection and Immunity (MUII) program. Her research area is translational research to improve HIV treatment outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Based at Makerere University’s Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), she has studied the epidemiology of suboptimal immune recovery in African cohorts through the International Epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AIDS in East Africa (IeDEA) consortium, and biological predictors of suboptimal immune recovery such as persistent immune activation, inflammation and incomplete recovery of the innate and adaptive immune systems, among antiretroviral therapy (ART)-treated individuals. Her current focus is to understand the role of immune modulatory interventions on HIV treatment outcomes and non-communicable disease risk among adults aging with HIV.
Damalie is a mentor of masters, doctoral, post-doc and junior faculty at MaKCHS through several degree and non-degree research programs including the AFYA-BORA Consortium for global health leadership training in Africa, the NIH-funded NURTURE Research Training and Mentoring Program for Career Development of Faculty at MakCHS.
