Dr Julie-Anne Tangena is a public health entomologist. In September 2019, through competitive entry, she was awarded an MRC Skills Development Fellowship to improve mosquito surveillance activities of vector control programs.
Mosquito surveillance is key to achieving malaria control and elimination. Surveillance is a costly and time-consuming activity. Vector control programs have limited capacity to implement this and if not done properly, limit the reliability of disease risk estimations. To address this, Julie-Anne is developing an entomological surveillance tool that improves the efficiency and effectivity of mosquito surveillance in Blantyre district, Malawi.
Julie-Anne has had a long-standing interest in understanding her surroundings. This led her to study Biology (BSc and MSc) at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. Her specialization in medical entomology during her masters set the trend. She currently has 8 years of experience working in and with developing countries in both Asia and Africa to improve vector control activities. Most of her time was spent in Asia, where she used a wide range of mosquito collection methods to understand the risk of vector-borne diseases for rubber workers in the northern provinces of Lao PDR. During this time at Institut Pasteur du Laos she attained her PhD from Durham University. After completing her PhD in 2016, she continued working within the Institut Pasteur network, coordinating a South-South project in both Lao PDR and Côte d’Ivoire.
In May 2018 Julie-Anne joined LSTM as a Post-doctoral research associate. She worked in collaboration with Oxford University on understanding the spatio-temporal patterns of insecticide resistance. She has since started her MRC fellowship, dividing her time between LSTM, Lancaster University and Malawi.