Kisakye Diana Kabbale
PhD Student
Institution
Makerere University, Uganda
Bio
Dr. Kisakye holds a Bachelor's in Medicine and Surgery from Makerere University and an MSc in Genomic Medicine from St George's University and King's College, London. She is currently a PhD Scholar at Makerere University and in the Nielsen Lab (Virginia Tech). She also volunteers as a clinician in the Unit of Genetics at Makerere University and in the Department of Paediatrics at Mulago National Referral Hospital.
She is interested in using genomics and data science to inform novel treatment strategies for patients. Her current research focuses on Cryptococcus neoformans, WHO's #1 priority fungal pathogen, which causes fatal meningitis in immunocompromised people. She uses pathogen GWAS and other analytical approaches to probe the pathogen and host to identify pathogen genetic variations contributing to poor outcomes, and patient subpopulations at risk of poor outcomes. She was a recipient of a Commonwealth Scholarship (2019-2020) and has been awarded several travel grants.