HOME - Martha Luka

Biography

I am a dedicated health researcher with keen interest in genomics, phylogeny, virology and bioinformatics. I have worked on genomics data to study the genetic diversity, evolution and transmission dynamics of respiratory viruses such as human rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. I am an effective communicator and have a solid grounding in R, Linux and python programming languages.

Experience

Computational Biologist MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR)

Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

I analyzed public health and genetic data to understand virus evolution and generated SARS-CoV-2 infection cases prediction models. I also contributed to publications and presented work at scientific colloquia.

EANBiT MSc fellow KEMRI - Wellcome Trust

Kilifi, Kenya

For my MSc project, I sought to understand the transmission dynamics of human rhinovirus within and between different scales of social observation using sequence data.
I generated a new laboratory protocol for the whole-genome sequencing of rhinoviruses (dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.bukxnuxn).
I also compared the performance of whole genomes to partial sequences in inferring transmission (https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/6-178)

IDeAL PgD fellow KEMRI - Wellcome Trust

Kilifi

Molecular Epidemiology of Human Rhinovirus From 1-Year Surveillance Within a School Setting in Rural Coastal Kenya (https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/7/10/ofaa385/5897788).
Whole genome sequencing of endemic coronaviruses (https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/MRA.00730-19).

Medical Laboratory Technologist The Nairobi Hospital

Nairobi

Phlebotomy, molecular biology, microbiology, customer care.

Intern CDC/KEMRI

Taqman array, PCR, DNA extraction and purification.

Intern

National Public Health Laboratory