Of passion, support, and pacing up the science ladder

Isabella Oyier sits at her desk at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Program. [Isabella Oyier]

Four times during this interview, Prof Isabella Oyier mentions ‘passion’ as a key driving force in her education and scientific career. But even before she says it, you can actually hear it in her tone, or read it in her disarming smile which never seems to leave her face. The other word she probably repeats quite as much is ‘support’, and for good reason.

It took both of these, the former an intrinsic value she has nurtured since childhood, to climb up her career ladder, first being appointed as the Head of the Biosciences Department at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) and Professor of Molecular Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, eventually becoming the Deputy Director (Kilifi) of the KWTRP in May this year. She is happy to credit people who held her hand on her way up.

An African lady at the helm of one of the continent’s most prominent research institutions is no mean feat however you look at it. The journey up is fraught with hurdles, often deliberately designed to derail a lady’s journey. But from a young age, motivated and mentored by passionate trailblazers, including her scientist mother and economist father who pointed her towards molecular biology, calling it ‘the future’, she knew she would end up in science.

And in 2020, when COVID-19 flared and swept through societies, leaving a trail of death and devastation, and many years after the dream was first conceptualised, Prof Oyier, who was already working at KWTRP, her dream organisation, saw the full potential of a research Centre working at full throttle, and researchers firing on all cylinders for the country’s benefit. It satisfied her greatly, especially as she was playing a key role in the organization’s efforts which, ultimately, saw the country through a tempestuous moment. 

“At the time, I was the head of the biosciences; our laboratory was designated a national COVID-19 testing center for the coast,” she says. “The county rapid response teams were collecting potential COVID-19 test samples and sending them to us so that we could confirm whether these individuals had COVID-19 virus or not. We ran all the tests and relayed information directly back to the county rapid response teams and to the national center in Nairobi so that they could track what was happening.”

Experience gained in over 35 years of the institution’s existence had helped build research capacity, including acquisition of the finest possible research infrastructure, and KWTRP easily pivoted to address the new COVID-19 problem. Now the nation could rely on this experience for solutions that were desperately needed.

“The other innovative approach we decided to deploy quite rapidly was genomics.”

Genomics helped in the country’s tracking of the COVID-19 viruses’ spread  and spotting of possible new variants. “We were able to identify that it was actually once the pandemic hit Europe that it came into Africa, for example.” This helped in advising on quarantine procedures and making travel advisories.

As molecular biology worked its wonders as one way to help the country monitor its health situation, within the institution we also deployed economic costing and modelling to assist the Ministry of Health to determine how the COVID-19 burden would weigh down on the country.

“As the country was thinking about easing the lockdown, they needed to know the number of people that have been affected by the virus already. Beyond COVID-19 testing, we were able to provide them with an estimate of the number of individuals that had antibodies (to the virus) in their blood and thus how many individuals had been exposed,” she says.

Tracing Prof Oyier’s journey to the decision-making positions at the top of KWTRP is quite interesting.

At a time when many of her peers drifted towards arts, she decided to go into science. She grew up in Nairobi and went to school there until, for her tertiary education, she went to study in the United Kingdom, but her heart was always in Kenya.

As an undergraduate student, she worked on trypanosomes as a shadowing student at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), one of those early experiences that she credits with motivating her. She interned at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust for six months before going to complete her PhD. These experiences stuck and ultimately drew her back home.

“During my internship, I realized that this was an international and elite research Centre of excellence, and it was easy, and exciting to return.”

Prof Oyier is one to keep her gaze focused on the top, and to allow herself to dream big. After she returned to Kenya, she honed her research skills, working in an environment she was deeply passionate about. Her leadership skills also sharpened. 

“As I grew my research career, I was supported to successfully apply for research funding that supported others as well, supervising students, and mentoring colleagues,” she says.

And then the opportunity came to become a head of department.

“I think at that point when the advert came out, I said, ‘I’m actually ready for this and will be quite excited to take on a leadership position at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust,’ given all that I had experienced and the excitement of working at the Centre in this new role.”

Buoyed by the institution’s strong work ethic and a strong research culture, she was able to grow through different leadership positions. The duty to serve and train others, and to continue to develop the strong research culture that had been in existence for the lifespan of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Programme, became more pronounced.

As a lady scientist, those lofty positions meant greater self-scrutiny. Not many women get to these positions, and she was more aware of her gender than ever before, and at the same time grateful for the support she has received in her journey, particularly from her husband.

Prof Oyier admits that women scientists like herself face intermittent hurdles along the way, needing grit, grace and gratitude to excel. Weighed down by, among other pressures, societal expectations on women, with motherhood looming at about the time they are completing their tertiary education, many fall off before they can hit their potential.

“I encourage all female scientists to keep pushing on. And I note that usually the drop-off is either after PhD or after the first postdoctoral position, so that is where we need to really, really look out for each other as women in science leadership,” she says. “Sometimes I think it is also a barrier we put on ourselves as women because we have so many other roles we take on if we are mothers, and even when we are not mothers, providing care for our parents or relatives. So that sort of maternal instinct sometimes slows us down in our own minds.”

The mother of three has, a few times, considered bolting from the lab to go take care of her children. As one who thrives in taking leadership and guiding people around her to be their best, she would have been excused for stepping down to mentor her children as any committed mother would. She says, again more than once, that she believes that the purest form of mentorship is one that leaves the mentees in better shape than their mentors, able to explore new chapters in life and to make a greater impact.

Prof Oyier strongly feels that a deliberate increase in research funding is a crucial cog in moving the wheels of development for any nation forward. It is a discussion that African nations can never avoid.

“If we had more of these Centres of excellence (like KEMRI-Wellcome Trust), then you’d have places where people can be absorbed.” Many African scientists who study abroad struggle to fit in once they return, finding a not-so-conducive environment to absorb and support them, with institutions largely unable to remunerate them properly, a serious damper on these scientists’ contribution.

She also advocates for universities to consider research as a parallel arm to teaching, ‘not as an add-on’.

In building local capacity, Prof Oyier strongly believes that advocacy driven by local scientists best influences local policy.

“About incentivising our researchers here, I would say we learnt a great deal from the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. We need to be committed to research science as a nation because it has value, and it has the solutions to our problems. We were able to inform the public health response. Who should we quarantine? Who should we not? Our health economists, we were able to cost the impact of the lockdown on our economy. We were able to look at the social aspects of lockdown on society. We were also able then to design the vaccine and roll it out and advise the government on which of the vaccines to use because we’d done the test in our local context,” she says.

Prof Oyier’s current research focuses on integrating malaria molecular epidemiology into routine surveillance in Kenya, an initiative that partners with the Division of National Malaria Programme to implement malaria molecular surveillance activities in the country. She co-leads a Wellcome-funded project across the Wellcome Major International Programs (AHRI, CIDRI-A, KWTRP, MLW, MORU and OUCRU), focusing on real-time pathogen tracking of arboviruses (dengue and chikungunya) and antimicrobial resistance using genomics surveillance.

She says that Africa should actually build the capacity for finding solutions to global problems. The malaria problem, which she has been working on for decades, is one of those she believes should be considered from a different approach.

“We still have an estimated 280 million cases of malaria infections globally. And the reason I say globally is because as a continent or as a country, we shouldn’t think of malaria as a local problem, because we should have local solutions for global problems. Malaria is a global problem.”

How does she keep the teams she leads motivated?

“It is about passion, it is self-motivation, it is service. It is also collegiality and collaboration. Ensuring that scientists are not in competition with each other or trying to tear each other apart in the process, because we are a team. The sum of the parts put together is always greater,” she says.

The mother of three, who is deeply grateful to a number of supervisors who guided her academic journey, is happy to mentor others after her.

To the young scientists, she asks for them to find solutions to our local and global problems and to keep asking questions. There are no answers where there were no questions first.