A congratulatory fete was held at the KAVI-ICR on 25/06/2021 to fete Dr. Robert Langat one of our staff who completed his PhD doctorate program (PhD in Immunology) from Imperial College London, UK in late 2020. The award was done in early 2021.

Robert completing the program in time showed a rare commitment in his focus to improving research in mucosal immunology field within the Institute, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic during his final year of the program.

Robert is involved in HIV mucosal immunology, transmission, and prevention sciences. His key interests are approaches that provide unique insights into spatio-temporal attributes generated from imageries that focus on earlier events of HIV transmission and prevention in the human tissues. He is also involved in epidemiology and social behavioural science that involve Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) and Key populations. Currently Robert joined a team of scientists characterizing the antiviral humoral immunity that developed in Kenya throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (March 2020 -May 2021) to determine if immunity is compromised in the context of emerging global and Kenyan/East Africa regional SARS-CoV- 2 variants.