Amina Abubakar Author

Amina Abubakar is Professor at the Medical College, East Africa and Director at the Institute for Human Development, Aga Khan University. She is also a Senior Research Scientist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute/Wellcome Trust Research Programme and a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford.  She has more than 18 years research experience working in rural settings in Kenya within multidisciplinary teams. She is interested in both acquired and congenital brain disorders. Specifically, her research interests lie in a) quantifying the neurocognitive burden of early childhood diseases; b) developing culturally appropriate psychological measures for use in SSA and; c) identifying culturally appropriate intervention strategies for at-risk children in SSA. In 2016, she was awarded the Royal Society Pfizer Award in recognition of her pioneering psychological research in East Africa, and for the impact her work has had in the field of neurodevelopmental assessment.

Kirsten Donald is Professor and Head of Division of Developmental Paediatrics, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital and Deputy Director at the Neuroscience Institute. She heads up Developmental Paediatrics at Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital and is Deputy Director of the University of Cape Town Neuroscience Institute. Working both in neurological and developmental conditions, she understands the conditions themselves, has broader appreciation of the public health issues for individuals and families with these conditions globally, as well as having insight into the particular challenges of those living in the LMIC setting. In addition, she holds a large multisite research portfolio which primarily focuses on early-life determinants of brain health and neurological disorders with global significance.

Jo Wilmshurst is Professor and Head of the Division of Paediatric Neurology, in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa, and at the Neuroscience Institute. She is a past president of the International Child Neurology Association (2018-2022). She is a member of the executive board of the Paediatric Neurology and Development Association of Southern Africa (PANDA-SA) and the African Child Neurology Association (ACNA). She is chair of the African Commission for the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) and serves on various other task forces and Commissions. She is director of the African Paediatric Fellowship Program – a training program under the auspices of the University of Cape which aims at developing skills in paediatric disciplines of doctors from across Africa. She is an associate editor for Epilepsia and on the editorial board for the JICNA, the Journal of Child Neurology, Epileptic Disorders, Seizure and Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology. She has over 80 peer-reviewed publications and her interests lie in rare neurological disorders, such as neuromuscular diseases and neurocutaneous syndromes, and common high impact diseases, such as epilepsy and neuroinfections.

Charles Newton is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. He was born in Kenya, qualified in Cape Town, South Africa, with postgraduate training in Paediatrics in Manchester and London, United Kingdom. As a lecturer at University of Oxford, he returned to Kilifi Kenya in 1989, to help set up a unit to study severe malaria in African children. Thereafter he spent 2 years as a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, USA; studying mechanisms of brain damage in central nervous system infections. He completed his training in Paediatric Neurology at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and Queens Square in London, UK. In 1998 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellowship at University College London, to return to Kilifi, to study central nervous system (CNS) infections in children. He conducts research on CNS infections in children; epidemiological studies of epilepsy and neurological impairment; tetanus, jaundice and sepsis in neonates. In 2011 he took up a professorship in Psychiatry at the University of Oxford to concentrate of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Epilepsy and mental illness disorders after CNS infections in Africa