Summary
Professor Julie Makani is Provost Visiting Professor at Imperial College London, UK from 1 April 2023.
She is a Physician Scientist in the Department of Haematology and Blood Transfusion at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) www.muhas.ac.tz and Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) https://www.mnh.or.tz/ Tanzania established one of the world’s largest single-center study cohorts for sickle cell disease.
She serves as Principal Investigator of the Sickle Cell programme in MUHAS and Sickle Pan African Research Consortium (SPARCO) Clinical Coordinating Centre (CCC) within SickleInAfrica network http://www.sickleinafrica.org/. She is Site Principal Investigator for MUHAS for H3ABioNet https://www.h3abionet.org/; Co- Principal Investigator SickleGenAfrica http://sicklegenafrica.com/
Her work aims to use sickle cell disease as a model to establish scientific and healthcare solutions in Africa, that are locally relevant and globally significant. The approach integrates public health interventions with genomics including gene therapy to improve health and cure sickle cell disease.
Professor Makani (MD, PhD, FRCP, FTAAS) trained in Medicine (Tanzania), specialized in Internal Medicine (UK), and completed her PhD in clinical epidemiology of sickle cell disease (UK). She was a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow [Training 2003 – 2009; Intermediate 2012 - 2017], Tutu Leadership Fellow (2009) www.alinstitute.org and Honorary Visiting Research Fellow, University of Oxford (2003 - 2016). She received the 2011 Royal Society Africa Award http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd17odE1YLs on the application of genomic research to improve health and find a cure for sickle cell disease. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of UK and Fellow of the Tanzania Academy of Sciences.