Fellows
Andrea Papadopoulos
SANTHE Post-doctoral Fellow
Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI), Durban, South Africa
Multi-site characterisation of T cell responses to COVID-19 vaccination in people living with HIV
Andrea Papadopoulos is a South African-born and educated researcher currently working in immunology, with a focus on HIV and COVID-19. She co-supervises a Master’s student and continues to contribute to multidisciplinary infectious disease research.
Before joining the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI), she spent six years working in tuberculosis (TB) molecular biology as a research assistant. She completed her PhD at the Centre of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa. At Wits, she also obtained an MSc (Med) in which she explored a concept for HIV viral load point-of-care testing, leading to a provisional patent disclosure and recognition as a Wits First Time Inventor.
Her academic background includes a BSc in Microbiology and Biochemistry, followed by a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Medicine and Haematology. Her research trajectory has consistently focused on HIV and TB, two of the most significant infectious disease challenges in Africa.
Her current postdoctoral work investigates how the immune system of people living with HIV responds to COVID-19 vaccines, with the goal of informing vaccine design tailored to this population.