Dr. Tendai Mugwagwa, from Zimbabwe, was in the inaugural graduating class from AIMS South Africa in 2003. She went on to receive a PhD in 2010 from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where she studied theoretical immunology and specifically the dynamics of the T cell when the human body faces infection, such as HIV. From there, Dr. Mugwagwa accepted a Post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Rochester Medical Center in the United States, where she used mathematical analysis and models to study immune responses to influenza. She then spent seven years at Public Health England as a Senior Infectious Diseases Modeller. She led the development of multidisciplinary models for a range of infectious diseases, focusing on tuberculosis in socially deprived groups, to help inform policy-making by evaluating the (cost-) effectiveness of intervention strategies.
Dr. Mugwagwa is currently a Health Technology Assessment Manager at Pfizer and a Visiting Researcher at Imperial College in the United Kingdom. She remains highly committed to giving back to AIMS as a visiting lecturer in epidemiology and supervisor of Master’s students in the research phase.
“AIMS changed my view of science. Before, I used to see mathematics as a set of problems that needed solving, but now it is a set of tools that I can use to solve other life problems.” Dr. Tendai Mugwagwa, Health Technology Assessment Manager, Pfizer; Visiting Researcher, Imperial College; and AIMS South Africa 2003 Alumnus