Francisca Mutapi

Francisca Mutapi is a professor in global health infection and immunity, co-director of the Global Health Academy at the University of Edinburgh, and deputy director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Global Health Research Unit Tackling Infections to Benefit Africa. She is the first black woman known to have been awarded a professorship by the University of Edinburgh.

Early life and education Mutapi was born in and grew up in Zimbabwe. She gained her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences in 1991 from the University of Zimbabwe, winning the BSc programs student award and the best BSc Honours student award in Biological Sciences. She gained a DPhil in Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford, as a Beit Trust Scholar.

Career

After completing her PhD, Mutapi undertook postdoctoral training at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp from 1997 to 1999. She went on to lectureships at St Hilda's College, Oxford and in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford.

In 2002, Mutapi joined the University of Edinburgh on a Medical Research Council Training Fellowship. She was elected a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences in 2015 Mutapi is also Deputy Director of the NIHR Global Health Research Unit TIBA (Tackling Infections to Benefit Africa), which takes a holistic approach to implementing research into evidence-based policies in African countries, taking into account science, technological challenges, and socioeconomics.

In 2018, Mutapi was awarded the University of Edinburgh's Chancellor's Award for Impact in recognition of her work on the treatment for bilharzia. The next year Mutapi was made a member of the advisory board for the UK Global Challenges Research Fund.

In addition to her scientific work, Mutapi is a painter, using funds from her work to support education in Zimbabwe.

Research

Mutapi's lab at the University of Edinburgh, the Parasite Immuno-epidemiology Group, researches immune responses to helminths within individuals and across populations primarily in Africa.

In poorer regions of Africa coinfection by multiple different pathogens is a common occurrence. Mutapi has pioneered research into many examples of this, such as malaria and schistosomiasis coinfections, and infections by multiple different malaria species. Personal life Mutapi is married to Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology. Together they have a daughter.