Moffat Nyirenda is Director of the MRC Unit in Uganda, and a leading non-communicable diseases researcher in Africa.
In 2010 he made the decision to return to his home country of Malawi where he became the first Professor of Research at the University of Malawi College of Medicine, and Associate Director of the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Programme. He has been the face of NCD research in Africa ever since.
He has shown differences in diabetes risk factors in Africa, compared with the West, uncovered a unique but common manifestation of type 2 diabetes, the “lean diabetes phenotype”, investigated the associated disease mechanisms, and brought his findings to impact on clinical practice across the continent.