Professor Eleni Aklillu, Pregart Co-Principal Investigator and Professor in Tropical Pharmacology and research group leader at Department of Laboratory Medicine, has been awarded the prestigious RSTMH Donald Mackay Medal.
The medal is presented for outstanding work in tropical health and awarded annually by the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH) and the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene.
Eleni Aklillu is Professor in Tropical Pharmacology and research group leader at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. She received a Bachelor of Pharmacy and MSc in Biochemistry from Addis Ababa University, and a PhD in molecular genetics from Karolinska Institutet. Her research focuses on clinical pharmacology and pharmacogenetics with special emphasis on how to optimize treatment and/or prevention of HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases. She investigated impacts of host-genetic factors, drug interactions, coinfections and comorbidities on drug safety and efficacy. Her research contributes to understanding treatment challenges and provide evidence-based recommendations to revise treatment guidelines and strategies.
Professor Aklillu has received several major external research grants as principal investigator and trained 20 PhD students from sub-Saharan Africa. She co-authored 130 peer-reviewed publications. Aklillu is a member of the Swedish research council committee for development research, a fellow of Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh and the African Academy of Sciences, and a former member of Strategic Advisory Committee for European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP).
“I am truly honored and delighted to receive the 2020 Donald Mackay Medal of Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. It is the result of our extensive clinical pharmacology research on the treatment of HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and various neglected tropical diseases. It is encouraging and overwhelming to have my work recognized in this way, and I would like to acknowledge the hard work of everyone in my research group and my collaborators in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, and Sweden during the last two decades” says Eleni Aklillu.