Dr Allan Kalungi
Assistant Professor
Institution
MRC/UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit
Bio
Dr Allan Kalungi is a psychiatric genetic epidemiologist and medical biochemist based at the MRC/UVRI & LSHTM Uganda Research Unit, with affiliations to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Makerere University.
He is a Wellcome Early Career Fellow. His research focuses on the genetic architecture, epidemiology and prediction of common mental disorders in African populations, particularly major depressive disorder and related neuropsychiatric and cardiometabolic traits. His work applies advanced statistical genetics and machine-learning methods to investigate disease risk, comorbidity and cross-population transferability of disease risk. Dr Kalungi is committed to advancing equitable, locally led psychiatric genomics research and capacity building in Africa.
Selected Publications
Kalungi A, Kinyanda E, Akena DH, et al. Prevalence and correlates of common mental disorders among participants of the Uganda Genome Resource: Opportunities for psychiatric genetics research. Mol Psychiatry. 2025;30(1):122-130.
Kalungi A, Stein DJ, Okewole N, Fatumo S. Approaches to enable equitable psychiatric genetic research in Africa.Commun Med (Lond). 2024;4(1):216. Published 2024 Oct 25.
Mutema AB, Linda L, Jjingo D, Fatumo S, Kinyanda E, Kalungi A. Predicting suicidality in people living with HIV in Uganda: a machine learning approach.Front Psychiatry. 2025;16:1584335. Published 2025 Aug 15.
Kalungi A, Womersley JS, Kinyanda E, et al. Internalizing Mental Disorders and Accelerated Cellular Aging Among Perinatally HIV-Infected Youth in Uganda. Front Genet. 2019;10:705. Published 2019 Aug 2.
Kalungi A, Seedat S, Hemmings SMJ, et al. Association between serotonin transporter gene polymorphisms and increased suicidal risk among HIV positive patients in Uganda. BMC Genet. 2017;18(1):71. Published 2017 Jul 25.