Dr Charles Masembe is a veterinarian, molecular geneticist, and Associate Professor, with teaching and research experience in molecular genetics, diagnostics, evolution and epidemiology of important diseases of domestic animals, mainly Foot-and-Mouth Disease, African swine fever, and pathogen discovery.

He has an MSc in Environment and Natural Resources Management (Makerere University), a PhD in Molecular Population Genetics (Makerere and Copenhagen University), and Post-Doctoral training (Makerere, Copenhagen University, and the Technical University of Denmark). He has been a visiting scientist under the Africa Biosciences Challenge Fund at the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA-ILRI) with the main emphasis on Metagenomics, and a Visiting Research Scientist at Yale School of Public Health and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Charles is now a Wellcome Trust fellow under the Intermediate Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine program; with a major focus on “Transmission dynamics of African swine fever in an endemic setting at the livestock-wildlife interface”(http://asf.mak.ac.ug).

Charles is experienced in the molecular biology and serological techniques needed for sampling and genetics/disease investigations in a variety of species. Research in his team has generated and published scientific information for conservation of Africa’s wildlife resources and patterns of disease transmission at the wildlife-domestic interface. This expertise has grown to a level that has genetically characterised animal epidemics with particular emphasis on foot-and-mouth disease in the African Great Lakes region and is aimed at unraveling livestock-wildlife disease interactions to design efficient disease control strategies for FMD.