Project: Malaria epidemiology and elimination in high transmission settings
Day group
Despite significant headway in reducing the global burden of malaria since the Roll Back Malaria initiative was launched in 1998, recent data from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that global progress towards eradication has stalled. The risk of Plasmodium falciparum rebound is greater for sub-Saharan Africa where the majority of malaria infections are chronic and asymptomatic, therefore going untreated and creating a persistent reservoir to fuel transmission. The large size of this reservoir is one of the greatest challenges to malaria elimination at a local and regional level. We have been investigating the diversity of P. falciparum in this reservoir to better understand the resilience of the parasite population to malaria control interventions in Bongo District located in the Upper East Region of Ghana, West Africa.
Project site: Bio21 Institute
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Day group
8 vacancies
Professor Karen Day runs a multidisciplinary malaria research group that utilises molecular epidemiology to study the role that variation in human, parasite, and vector genomes plays in modulating transmission dynamics of Plasmodium spp. She is also interested in cell-to-cell communication in malaria parasites to alter population behaviour. She has a strong track record in interdisciplinary training of the next generation of infectious disease epidemiologists.
Day group Current Projects
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Malaria epidemiology and elimination in high transmission settings
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
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Genomic epidemiology and malaria surveillance
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
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Investigating antimalarial drug resistance in response to community interventions
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
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Surveillance and spread of artemisinin drug resistance and local Anopheles spp. adaptation of Plasmodium falciparum
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
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Bioinformatic investigation of diversity of the variant antigen genes of Plasmodium falciparum in low and high transmission
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science
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Insights into the evolution of variant antigen gene recombinants of Plasmodium falciparum in high transmission
PhD/MPhil
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Social networking and malaria parasite / Quorum sensing in malaria parasites
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science
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Malaria and the human genome / Identifying regions of the human genome selected by Plasmodium spp
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
Research degrees at the Doherty Institute are administered by the University of Melbourne.