September 14, 2021
Congratulations to Prof Ric Price and Dr Kinley Wangdi who were awarded prestigious NHMRC Investigator grants for funding commencing in 2022.
Ric Price’s grant will focus on interventions to eliminate Plasmodium vivax malaria, a form of malaria that is found mainly in Asia, Latin America, and in parts of Africa. Treatment and prevention of vivax malaria is complicated by the existence of dormant stage parasites that can remain undetected in the liver for months before causing relapses.
Kinley Wangdi’s grant will address geospatial applications for the control of tropical infectious diseases in the Asia Pacific region. His research program aims to use geospatial applications to improve surveillance and management of infectious diseases, including developing a spatial decision support system (SDSS) for malaria elimination in Solomon Islands, designing an early warning system for dengue in Indonesia and spatial risk prediction for soil transmitted helminths in the Lower Mekong Basin.