Dr. James Munyao King’oo is a Senior Lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya and an Adjunct Research Fellow at Amref International University. He is an AFWYSTI-affiliated STEM mentor with special focus on infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and phage research. He holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology (2023) and an M.Sc. in Biotechnology [Molecular Biology] (2010) from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, and a B.Sc. in Biochemistry (2006) from the same institution.
Over the last 17 years James has coordinated multi-country clinical trials and public-health research for the NIH, US-CDC, UW-TREE, KEMRI and Walter Reed Project, concentrating on infectious diseases, AMR, HIV drug-resistance, TB, cervical cancer, STIs, FGM, teenage pregnancy and SGBV. He is the founding CEO of the “Phage Hunters Training & Research Program” that builds Africa-wide capacity on bacteriophage isolation, genome analysis and phage-therapy advocacy as an alternative to antibiotics under the One-Health approach.
James has attracted competitive grants from KENET, Tsinghua-BRIGHT, ASSM and ISSM, and is widely published on HIV resistance, FGM prevention, and computational phage biology. He serves as peer reviewer for four international journals and sits on grant-review panels for AMR and SRHR initiatives.
A passionate mentor, James runs boot-camps, workshops, and webinars for university students on infectious diseases, AMR, molecular biology, bio-informatics and science communication, and supervises numerous undergraduate, Masters and PhD projects with a deliberate gender-parity target. His mission is to catalyse a new generation of African scientists tackling infectious diseases, climate-smart health solutions and gender equity through evidence-based innovation.