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I am currently employed by the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), Grants, Innovation and Product Development (GIPD) Unit as a Project Manager/Senior Scientist and a Programme Manager for the SAMRC Indigenous Knowledge (IK) based Bio-Innovation Platform. I am responsible for liaising with sponsors, project teams, regulatory bodies, universities to ensure proper conduct of the projects; meeting milestone targets as indicated in the awards; reporting writing to Directorate and funding bodies; development and maintenance of standard operating procedures; development of service level agreements and ensuring smooth project delivery; and coordinating or facilitating the strategic IKS project partnerships: proposal development, raise project funding, navigate the regulatory, laboratory science, pre-clinical and clinical aspects.
Previously, I worked for the SAMRC Cochrane Centre as a Senior Scientist working on Vaccine Implementation Research responsible for preparing research findings for publication in leading academic journals in collaboration with other Unit staff and led/coordinated projects on vaccine acceptance and uptake.  I have over 17 and half years’ research experience and have researched on Cancer, HIV/AIDS and TB, Vaccine Implementation Research and Precision Medicine. I have over 8 years’ research experience on HIV/AIDS and over two years on TB. I also was previously employed at EQUIP Innovation for Health (Right to Care) as a Senior Research Manager working in 17 countries across Africa, South East Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean towards achieving the UNAIDS 90- 90-90 targets, the project is funded by USAID which include HIV Self-testing (HIV)-Co-PI, Multi-month Scripting and Dispensing (MMSD) and other projects include Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PreP) demo projects (Namibia), Hepatitis C Virus projects (HCV) (Ukraine and Myanmar) and Costing and cost-effectiveness assessments of various innovative interventions. I also was previously employed by the University of Limpopo as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Pre-Clinical Sciences (Medical Biochemistry). I have completed an NIH FIC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship with the University of Venda (South Africa), HIV/AIDS & Global Health Research Programme, Department of Microbiology and the University of Virginia (USA), Center for Global Health where I worked as a Genetic Epidemiology/Statistical Genetics and Metabonomics Research Fellow conducting analytical and genetic epidemiological research with existing data sets and another Postdoctoral fellowship with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, in the Cell Biology Laboratory within the Centre for HIV and STIs. I have recently completed an Advanced Project Management Course with the University of Cape Town. I am a registered Professional Natural Scientist (registration number: 119189). I graduated with a PhD in Medical Immunology with the University of Pretoria (South Africa) at a graduation ceremony held on the 5th of September 2014, with a research project titled: “Compartmentalization, Adaptive Evolution and Therapeutic Response of HIV-1 in the Gastrointestinal Tract (GIT) of African patients infected with Subtype C: Implications for the Enhancement of Therapeutic Efficacy”. I also hold a B.Sc. degree with the University of the North (now University of Limpopo), where I majored in Microbiology and Biochemistry. During my Honours work at the same institution, I completed a project on cancer research titled, “Determination of the influence of lithium chloride (LiCl) on pro- and anti-apoptotic proteins in PK cells (15)”. These studies solidified my desire to pursue a career in health research, and highlighted the need to focus on transitional research that is of critical importance to South Africa and the developing world. As a result of a growing interest in HIV-1/AIDS and AIDS-related infections including tuberculosis and malnutrition and enteric diseases.