Wednesday, February 1, 2023

The Vice Chancellor Prof. Stephen Kiama will host Prof. Kirk Schulz, the 11th president of Washington State University and his delegation between Thursday, February 3rd   to 8th 2023.  The visit cements the already strong strategic partnership between the two universities that culminated in the signing of a memorandum of understanding in 2016 and will entail meetings with Principal Investigators of the various collaborative projects under implementation as well as explore additional areas of collaboration. The two universities have successfully collaborated for many years and have enjoyed a multi-faceted connectivity between faculty and students.  The key areas of collaboration have included joint graduate (PhD and Masters) level training and supervision, collaborative grant applications and co-development of research infrastructure.

Current ongoing projects include the D43 NIH funded program for training of physicians and veterinarians on Zoonosis and One Health under which fellow graduate research is conducted at the centres of excellence domiciled at UoN under the KAVI Institute of Clinical Research (KAVI-ICR), Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases (UNITID), and the Centre for Epidemiological modelling and analysis CEMA.

 The feed the Future Innovation Lab for animal health, a USAID program funded between WSU and UoN in collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute  and Kenya Livestock Research Organisation on the other hand focuses on research on vaccines, diagnostics , epidemiology , economics and social anthropology for the control of East Coast Fever-the primary cause for mortality of dairy cattle in several countries in Eastern Africa. An Antimicrobial Resistance(AMR) laboratory has also been established through the collaboration  at the University of Nairobi Institute of Tropical and infectious Diseases .

Washington State University is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest,campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant universities in the American West.