Dr Andrea Papadopoulos

Andrea Papadopoulos is a South African-born and educated researcher. She is currently performing immunology research in the context of HIV and COVID-19 and co-supervises a Master’s candidate. Before joining the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI), she gained six years’ of experience in tuberculosis (TB) molecular biology, working as a research assistant and completed her PhD at the Center of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. Also at Wits, she earned a MSc (Med) exploring a concept for HIV viral load point-of-care testing, for which she was acknowledged as a Wits First Time Inventor, disclosing a provisional patent application alongside her supervisors. Prior to this, she studied a BSc in Microbiology and Biochemistry, followed by a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Medicine and Haematology. Her subject and research project choices have always been guided by a keen interest in HIV and TB – two of Africa’s most fundamental health challenges prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, one of the main focuses of her post-doctoral research is understanding how the immune system of people living with HIV interacts with current COVID-19 vaccines, to understand how COVID-19 vaccine design can be better suited to this population.