Faith Osier

I had three late miscarriages and one early and that took a long while to recover from. Some women have children with serious disabilities.

whatever you have in your hand to do, if you give it your whole heart and all your energy, it will give you a lot of dividends.

I try to understand how adults in Africa learn to live in harmony with the parasite responsible for malaria, such that infections do not make them ill. This knowledge could help us design vaccines that would protect children, who can die as a result of a malaria infection.

Malaria still claims the lives of hundreds of thousands of children each year and has a major economic impact on the lives of many in sub-Saharan Africa. Children that survive severe malaria can be left with permanent physical disability that takes many forms.

The journey towards the development of a malaria vaccine is bumpy. It involves understanding highly evolved parasites that can replicate while hidden within the cells of their hosts.

This award helps to put African science and scientists firmly on the map. We can bring positive and meaningful change to our communities through effective research, innovation and leadership.

The second angle of our research aims to understand how the immune system handles the complexity of the malaria parasite. For example, if it produces antibodies, we need to identify the parasite proteins to which the antibodies are binding and the mechanisms they are using. To do this, we probe the parasite with antibodies from people who have developed resistance to malaria parasite.

I feel the urgency with dealing with these [infectious disease] problems because I have experienced them up close.

When you come into a place, it is really important to see people who are achieving things,” Professor Osier said. “If you come into a place where people are dead wood, however brilliant you may be, you are going to become dead wood yourself.

As you move up it becomes harder because you’ll be distracted by dramas and sideshows, but remember that they’re not the main story.

When will we have a malaria vaccine

The closest comparison I can give is with COVID-19. When it hit Western countries, we all felt it: the pain of lockdown; of losing someone; of being ill ourselves. We felt that urgency, that we needed a vaccine and we needed it yesterday, so we said, ‘let's do it, let's do everything that we can’. For diseases that are far off, that sense of urgency is lost.

As a woman who wants to have a rounded life, you will want children at some point. You have to accept that you enjoy all that comes with having children which will have a cost on how far your career can go.

I joined the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in 1998 as a junior doctor and was interested in training in paediatrics. It was here that I was introduced to research on malaria in general, and begun to understand that we know so little about this disease that has been with humans for such a long time.

It makes me appreciate the community that transformed a little girl growing up in Kenya into an international award-winning scientist.