Global  Council

David Serwadda is an infectious disease epidemiologist and physician, a Professor and former Dean of the School of Public Health at Makerere University College of Health Sciences in Kampala, Uganda.

Dr. Jessica Kissinger joined the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases at the University of Georgia in 2002. She is a Distinguished Research Professor of Genetics and former Director of UGA’s Institute of Bioinformatics. Her research focuses on the evolution and genomics of apicomplexan pathogens and the challenges of data integration in support of systems biology approaches. She is a Co-Investigator on the NIAID Bioinformatics Resource Center (BRC) VEuPathDB. Kissinger has served as a member of the H3Africa BioNet Scientific Advisory Board and the NIAID West African International Center for Excellence in Malaria Research Scientific Working Group. 

Mr. Peter van Heusden is originally a computer scientist who migrated from building research computing infrastructure to bioinformatics. His research focus is on the genomics pathogens that cause infectious diseases on the Africa continent, with a particular interest in TB and malaria and how bioinformatics and pathogen genomics can be translated into usable and effective tools for public health in resource poor settings. 

Dr. Jennifer Schopf has joined the TACC team as the Director for Networking Partnerships. In this role, she promotes collaborations enabled through regional data networks and with other national and international collaborations. Prior to joining TACC, Jennifer was Director of the International Networks Program at Indiana University. She has also served as an NSF program officer, a senior staff member for Globus, and a faculty member at Northwestern University. 

With experience that goes beyond the telecoms and IT industry our group of directors and officers are Dr. Andrew Kambugu, the Sande-McKinnell Executive Director at the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), College of Health Sciences, Makerere University (Mak).

Professor Nicola Mulder heads the Computational Biology Division at the University of Cape Town and leads H3ABioNet, a large Pan African Bioinformatics Network of 27 institutions in 17 countries. H3ABioNet aims to develop bioinformatics capacity to enable genomic data analysis on the continent. She is also co-PI of a Sickle Cell Data Coordinating Centre. Prof Mulder is actively involved in training and education as well as curriculum development in Bioinformatics and Genomic Medicine. She co-chairs international committees on Bioinformatics education and sits on a number of Scientific Advisory Boards for African and International projects.

Dr. Christian Happi is the Director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) at Redeemer's University in Nigeria, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genomics, and former Dean of the College of Postgraduate Studies at Redeemer’s University. 

Ms. Judith Okonkwo is a technology evangelist with experience working in Africa, Asia, and Europe. She advises on emerging technologies and is a guest lecturer at the Lagos Business School and the University of Westminster.  In 2016, Judith set up Imisi 3D, a creation lab in Lagos focused on building the Nigerian ecosystem for extended reality technologies (AR/VR/MR), and connecting XR communities across the African continent.

Dr. Alia Benkahla earned her Master’s in applied mathematics and a PhD in bioinformatics studies. started her career as Post-Doctoral fellow at the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin and moved to the Institut Pasteur de Tunis in 2005 where she initiated a research group of bioinformatics and biomathematics. 

Jeffrey Shaffer, PhD, is an expert biostatistician and data scientist and received a Ph.D. in biostatistics from Tulane University in 2007. His current work focuses on research and training efforts across sub-Saharan West Africa in the area infectious disease, Ebola virus disease, and malaria.

Dr. Darrell E. Hurt leads the Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch as the Chief of a group of about 50 researchers and software developers in the Office of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Mr. Michael Tartakovsky is the Chief Information Officer and Director of the Office of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology (OCICB) for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH).