Bio
As a senior academicI’ve been involved in formal training of BSc, MSc and PhD students, lecturing and supervising dissertations. I’m also acting as an informal mentor to several junior staff from the Veterinary Faculty and BiotechnologyCenter.Additionally,I’ve been Deputy Dean for research at the Veterinary Faculty for four years. Currently I’m leading a research group that deals with issues that have direct impact on the livelihood of the people for example trying to minimize the negative economic and social impact of animal and zoonotic diseases; reducing the negative impact of diseases on crop production; developing new tools for the rapid detection of diseases; and providing advice to policy-makers on how to formulate new disease control strategies.In due course we managed to establish the first biosafety laboratory class 3 for animal use in the country and to establish new technologies e.g. polymerase chain reaction in real time. The two recently created “One Health” platforms will contribute hugely for a new and better approach in establishing preventive and control measures for emerging and zoonotic diseases.Overall this work has the merit of building local technical competence in the diagnosis and epidemiology of important diseases, reducing its negative impact on society.