Diana Kisakye Kabbale

Dr. Kisakye holds a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from Makerere University and an MSc in Genomic Medicine from St George's University of London and King's College London. She has over 12 years of clinical experience and 5 years of experience in bioinformatics and data science. She is currently a PhD scholar at the Infectious Diseases Institute and the Nielsen Lab at Virginia Tech. She also serves as an Assistant Lecturer in Genetics in the Department of Pathology at Makerere University College of Health Sciences, and volunteers as a clinician in the Unit of Genetics at Makerere University and the Department of Paediatrics at Mulago National Referral Hospital, where she reviews patients with rare genetic disorders. Dr. Kisakye is interested in using genomics and data science to inform novel treatment strategies and improve the diagnosis of both communicable and non-communicable diseases. Her previous research examined how Mycobacterium tuberculosis evades host defenses, particularly its interference with host transcriptional networks. Her current research focuses on Cryptococcus neoformans, the WHO's top-priority fungal pathogen and the cause of cryptococcal meningitis, a fatal brain infection in immunocompromised individuals. She uses bioinformatics and other analytical methods to examine both the pathogen and the host, aiming to identify patient subgroups at risk of poor outcomes and the genetic variations in the pathogen that contribute to these risks. Through this work, she aims to drive personalised treatment strategies for patients with cryptococcal meningitis. At the national level, she has also contributed to the implementation of molecular surveillance strategies for malaria.