Dr. Julius Julian Lutwama
Dr. Julius Julian Lutwama is an Assistant Director of Research with the Ministry of Health at the Uganda Virus Research Institute, Entebbe. Dr. Lutwama trained as an Entomologist obtaining his PhD in 1991 and received further specialized training in molecular virology and entomology at the Centers for Diseases Control, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. He is the Deputy Director of the Institute and he is the head of the Department of Arbovirology, Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI). He also heads the WHO Collaborating National Influenza Center and the Highly Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory at UVRI. Dr. Lutwama is an Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology at the Makerere University College of Health Sciences. Over the 35 years of research work at UVRI, he has worked on numerous viral diseases including Influenza, Ebola, Marburg, Cremian Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, O’nyong-nyong, Bwamba, Pongola, Yellow Fever, Rift Valley Fever, Dengue, Zika, West Nile, Foot and Mouth Disease, etc. He has together with several collaborators, been involved in the long term follow up studies of cohorts of survivors of highly infectious diseases like EVD, Marburg, CCHF, etc. He has published widely in local and international peer-reviewed journals on a number of virus diseases.
He has participated in numerous virus disease outbreak investigations, responses, and control. He is part of teams that have discovered several new viruses. He is a member of several local and international health sciences Task Forces, committees, associations, and networks. He heads and coordinates a number of collaborating programs at UVRI. His research interest is in field and laboratory research and epidemic aid investigations of vector-borne viral infections and their arthropod vectors, and also has an interest in the pathogenesis, innate immune responses, transmission, ecology, and epidemiology of human and animal viral infections and other emerging viral infections, defining disease etiologies, ecology, and pathogenesis for disease diagnosis, surveillance, prevention, and control.