Symon Kariuki

I am a Postdoctoral Scientist at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya, and a Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, UK. I am also a fellow at the Global Initiative in Neuropsychiatric Genetics Education in Research (GINGER), Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, USA. I was funded by the British Commonwealth Scholarship Commission to study MSc in Clinical Neurosciences of the Epilepsies at King's College London, and by the Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship to study a DPhil in Clinical Medicine (specialising in Neuropsychiatric Epidemiology) at the University of Oxford, where my DPhil project won a Graduate Research Prize of the Medical Sciences Division.  I have a broad research interest in the epidemiology of neurological, neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders in people living in sub-Saharan Africa, including the genetic susceptibility to these disorders. I have been awarded a 3-year MQ fellowship in mental health to study the genetic risk and overlap between epilepsy and autism spectrum disorders and psychotic disorders.