Dr Fredros Okumu

Dr Fredros Okumu is a Public Health Researcher and current Director of Science at Ifakara Health Institute, in the United Republic of Tanzania. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Nelson Mandela Africa Institute of Science & Technology and Associate Professor at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. His research focuses on the biology and control of infectious diseases, focusing mostly on Malaria and arthropod-borne viruses. 

Dr Okumu initially trained as a Public Health Officer at Moi University College of Health Sciences in Kenya (2001–2005). He holds a Master degree in Applied Parasitology (University of Nairobi, 2008), and another Master degree in Geo-Information Science, Earth Observation & Environmental Modeling (Lund University, Sweden 2011). He earned a PhD in Infectious Tropical Diseases from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 2012, and an MBA-International Health Management from University of Basel & Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute, Switzerland in 2019. Fredros was awarded the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (ASTMH) Young Investigator Award in 2009, a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellowship in Public Health & Tropical Medicine (2014-2019), a Howard Hughes-Gates International Scholarship (2017-2022), and an ASPEN New Voices Fellowship (2019). He was named among Top 100 Global Thinkers by US-Based Foreign Policy Magazine in 2016, and Top 30 African Innovators by Quartz Africa in 2018. In March, 2020, he was named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He was inducted in June 2016 as a Young Affiliate of the African Academy of Sciences.

Dr Okumu was a co-chair of the Malaria Eradication Research Agenda consultative group on Tools for Elimination (2016-2018) and the WHO/RBM Vector Control Working Group on New Tools for Malaria Vector Control (2016-2019). He has also previously provided research support for the Africa Union High-Level Panel on Emerging Technologies, and worked as an expert Assessor for WHO Vector Control Product Prequalification (since 2017). In 2018, Fredros was appointed to the 12-member Malaria Strategic Advisory Panel of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and his term renewed in 2020. Fredros is a Subject Editor of the Parasites & Vectors journal, handling Dipteran Vectors, and a member of Editorial Boards of Malaria Journal and Scientific African. 

He has more than 100 publications in international peer-reviewed journals, and maintains an active research group with staff, students and collaborators from more than ten countries. Fredros is very passionate about improving ecosystems for young researchers in Africa, and actively participate in non-technical scientific communication.