DrCatherine Kibirige

I am a molecular virologist working on HIV-1 nucleic acid quantification and on the problem of how diagnostics reach the people who need them the most.

I am Intellectual Property Strategy Officer in Imperial's Enterprise Division, where I advise researchers across the Faculty of Medicine on commercialisation and intellectual property. My work covers due diligence on student invention disclosures and IP clearance, the Reward to Inventors Scheme, the transfer of non-commercialised IP to inventors pursuing independent routes, and compliance with UK research security regulation including export control licensing and National Security and Investment Act notifications. My research is hosted in the Molecular Diagnostics Unit, Section of Virology, Department of Infectious Disease.

I began in 1999 as a laboratory volunteer at the Rakai Health Sciences Programme in Uganda, and hold a PhD in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, supported by a Fogarty International Fellowship. I subsequently worked with the US Military HIV Research Program before joining Imperial in 2016. I am completing a Global Master of Public Health at Imperial.

Beyond Imperial I hold an Honorary Senior Research Fellowship at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Tanzania, where I deliver grant-writing training for early-career researchers and mentor colleagues preparing applications, and I serve as Chief Scientific Advisor to Afromics. I am an Advisory Panel Member and Grant Reviewer for the GSK Africa Open Lab Fund and sit on a research ethics subcommittee at King's College London, where I also coordinate NIHR- and Rosetrees Trust-funded clinical trials of home-based neurostimulation for major depression. I founded the Global Health Funding Digest, which addresses information asymmetry in access to funding intelligence for under-represented researchers.