MLW’s Pre-Master Intern Clinton Nkolokosa has secured a Wellcome Trust International Masters Fellowship to enroll in the MSc Geographical Information Systems Programme at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Nkolokosa’s Wellcome Trust International Master’s Fellowship award is ‘Measuring the impact of past, present and future environmental changes on schistosomiasis transmission in southern Malawi’.

The course will equip him with advanced geostatistical skills, which he will use when he returns to Malawi in August 2022 for his fieldwork in Mangochi, Chikwawa, and Nsanje districts. He will use novel geospatial statistical methods to quantify the relationship between human-induced environmental change and schistosomiasis snail host distributions in Southern Malawi. Dr Chris Jones, Dr Michelle Stanton, and Dr James Chirombo, will supervise Nkolokosa’s project while Professor Russell Stothard and Dr Janelisa Musaya will provide the support.

“I am happy to receive this prestigious fellowship! My ambition is to make a public health impact, and I am confident that the Wellcome Master’s International Fellowship will provide me with an unparalleled opportunity to achieve my personal, academic, and research goals. I am excited at the prospect of turning this ambition into reality,” said Nkolokosa.

Clinton Nkolokosa joined Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust in September 2020. He was awarded the CORE Pre-Master Internship under the supervision of Dr. Chris Jones (Head of Vector Biology, MLW) and Dr. Michelle Stanton (Lecturer in Spatial Epidemiology at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine). His research activities focus on using cutting-edge geospatial tools to provide a unique insight into malaria disease transmission. He is working on using drone imagery to identify the habitat of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes in Kasungu in addition to using satellite imagery to explore dry season environmental drivers of malaria transmission under the Maladrone Project.