Prof. Dorothy Yeboah-Manu
Prof. Dorothy Yeboah-Manu is a Professor of Bacteriology at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), University of Ghana; Biomedical and Public Health Research Scientist; and a leading researcher on Buruli ulcer (BU), a debilitating disease. Her scientific research contributions are in the diagnosis of the infection and indeed, you established a diagnostic center at NMIMR for case confirmation. She is currently the Director of NMIMR.
She was part of the team that identified genomic markers that were used to type Mycobacterium ulcerans (MU) isolates from Ghana and found for the first-time genomic diversity in African M. ulcerans isolates. Until this work, the general notion from various scientific studies was that there is no genomic diversity among African isolates. This finding was given attention in the Science Daily News.
She holds a PhD (Magna cum laude 5.7/6.0) from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basel; MSc in Applied Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; and a BSc (Hons) First Class Degree in Biochemistry from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
Professor Dorothy Yeboah-Manu is a member of the West-African Network of Excellence for Tuberculosis, AIDS and Malaria (WANETAM) funded by EDCTP. Furthermore, she is a member, Pan-African Network for Rapid Research, Response, Relief and Preparedness for Infectious Disease Epidemics. She is a member of the founding faculty that developed the proposal and established the World Bank-sponsored African Centre of Excellence, the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), which is a major capacity-building project at the Department of Biochemistry Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Ghana. She is currently the Deputy Centre Leader. In addition to being part of the body that developed the concept, she was also involved in the curriculum development and led the development of two courses; Bacterial and Viral Infections as well as Molecular Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases. Within the Wellcome Trust-DELTAS Africa initiative, she is a faculty member and the post-doctoral coordinator with the aim of bringing into the continent, newly qualified brainy scientists.
She is currently working with Sight Savers to evaluate diagnostic tools and determine the prevalence of trachoma in some districts in northern Ghana. Under JICA funding, she is also involved in the establishment of a surveillance system in a model district to understand the contribution
of various microorganisms in diarrhoea outbreaks in Ghana and associated host and pathogen risk factors. In collaboration with the Veterinary Services, School of Public Health and Centre for Disease Control, USA, she is helping to build capacity and establish a system in the country to survey anthrax in both humans and animals. Furthermore, together with collaborators from Cambridge are looking into seasonal changes in nasopharyngeal microbiome and the occurrence of meningitis.
She is a recipient of the Royal Society Africa Prize in 2018
for recognition as an outstanding research scientist based in Africa who is
making an innovative contribution to the sciences.
Professor Dorothy Yeboah-Manu on account of her continued leadership, excellence, and innovativeness as a Microbiologist of international repute, scientist and researcher, she was elected into Fellowship of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences on 10 March, 2022.
