Speakers

Angelina Mwesige Kakooza

Place of Birth : Uganda
Position : Professor, Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Uganda
Field of study : Pediatric Neurology, Epilepsy, Cerebral Palsy, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Neurodevelopmental Disorders, HIV/AIDS-related Neurology

Angelina Kakooza Mwesige is a Ugandan scholar, whose research focuses on neurodevelopmental disorders in children, centred on their epidemiology, early screening, identification, and community-based interventions in Uganda.
She works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health of the School of Medicine at Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Kampala, Uganda. She earned her PhD in Medical Science as a joint degree in 2016 at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Kampala, Uganda. She had post-doctoral experience with Training Health Researchers into Vocational Excellence, a consortium focused on health research capacity building in Africa, carried out at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Makerere University, Uganda.
She has twenty-five years of teaching experience of under- and post-graduate medical students as well as allied health workers, conducted mainly at Mulago National Specialized Hospital, Kampala, which is the teaching hospital for Makerere University College of Health Sciences. She has mentored 30 Master of Medicine students at Makerere University and 4 PhD students at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. She has an extensive network of research collaborators around the world that have enabled her to conduct several hospital and population-based studies on neurodevelopmental disorders with emphasis on epilepsy, cerebral palsy, autism, and nodding syndrome. She has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications from this work. She was a recipient of the Golden Jubilee Medal Award in March 2018, in recognition of her contribution to the field of Science and Technology in the area of pediatric neurology in Uganda. She serves as a consultant and master trainer in the Interventions for Disability in Early Childhood project in Uganda and was instrumental in the development of the National Disability Blue Print for the country in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender, Labor & Social Development.
Her current areas of research cover studies on early detection and interventions for young infants at high risk of neurodevelopmental delay and disability in Nepal and Uganda, development of community engagement projects to empower adolescents living with epilepsy in Uganda to reduce stigma in their communities, as well as the development and testing of an interactive epilepsy smartphone application to improve resilience among them.
She is a member of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences, the medical and scientific advisory committee of Autism Speaks, the African Child Neurology Association, the American Neurological Association, the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine, and the Women in World Neuroscience, a branch of the International Brain Research Organization. She is a founder member and treasurer of the Eastern African Academy on Childhood Disability, immediate past Chair of the Uganda Epilepsy Society, immediate past representative of the International Society for Autism Research, Global Senior Leaders for the East African region, and immediate past Chair for the International League Against Epilepsy for the African region (2017-2021).

• Junior Resident/Intern-Mulago National Specialized Hospital, January 1992-January 1993
• Medical Officer-Butabika Mental Referral and Mulago National Specialized Hospitals, February 1993-August 1996
• Senior Resident-Mulago National Specialized Hospital, September 1996-August 1999
• Associate Consultant-Mulago National Specialized Hospital, September 1999- September 2008
• Lecturer/Child Neurologist-Makerere University, October 2008-June 2016
• Senior Lecturer/Child Neurologist-Makerere University, July 2016-October 2021
• Associate Professor/Child Neurologist-Makerere University, November 2021-Present