Especially in times of the coronavirus pandemic, when social and economic life was massively affected in many places, the importance of holistic medical and health science research came into focus. For our Kenyan alumnus Dr Eddy Okoth Odari, however, healthcare has always been at the centre of research and teaching: he studied Medical Microbiology at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Nairobi. His outstanding academic achievements and his diverse church and social commitment helped him to obtain a KAAD scholarship in virology at JKUAT (2008-2010), which also included a six-month stay at the Max von Pettenkofer Institute for Hygiene and Medical Microbiology at LMU Munich. As an outstanding Sur-Place Scholar and active member of the Kenyan KAAD family, he then applied for a PhD programme and returned to the same institute in Munich in 2011. His research in virology focussed on the development of simple tests for HIV - a very important project for application in Africa.
Many KAAD seminars, three annual academies and a dissertation later, he returned to Kenya as Dr Eddy Odari, where he has had more than enough to do as a virologist ever since: He teaches as a Senior Lecturer at JKUAT in Nairobi, is the founder of the Ogallo Osako Memorial Foundation and is always in close contact with the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering in Indiana, USA, and the Chiba University School of Engineering in Japan as a Visiting Scholar and Scientist . He has remained loyal to KAAD to this day and is an integral part of the partner structures of the KASEA network(KAAD Association of Scholars from East Africa). He was chairman of KASEA-Kenya for one term and is now a member of the KAAD partner committee in Nairobi. Here, Eddy Odari plays an important role in the selection of scholarship applicants and the mentoring of KAAD scholarship holders.
His academic focus in research and teaching is on bio-medical research, the implementation of these research results in vulnerable social strata and research into sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), especially in the context of migration. He also publishes successfully in various journals and organises conferences, such as the Africa Biotechnology and Biomedical Conference in Nairobi, which has now been held three times.
In addition to his academic work, he is involved with his Ogallo-Osako Memorial Foundationfor the education of physically impaired people and the empowerment of remote, rural communities in Kenya.
Eddy Okoth Odari thus reflects the central concerns of KAAD in many respects: academic excellence combined with social and church commitment and responsibility. As a sought-after virologist, he not only enriches his home country of Kenya, but also KAAD and its network with his creative ideas and his wide-ranging, global academic network.
