Associate Professor Richard ‘Echodu is current and the first Director of Gulu University Multifunctional Research Laboratories. Associate Professor Richard ‘Echodu is a molecular biologist/Genetics by training with long term research interests in areas of molecular diagnostics, epidemiology, population genetics, genomics, public health and immunology on tropical diseases. Prof Echodu has played critical role in the establishment of Gulu University Multifunctional Research Laboratories, advising on structural designs, supervision of the building construction, equipment purchase and installation and recruitment of staff at this new research facility. Previously, Prof. Echodu served us a dean Faculty of Science for five years where speared headed writing of eight (8) academic programmes of which four (6) academic got accrediated and running in the Faculty now including Masters of Science in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and PhD programme. Read More
Prof. Echodu benefited from Fogarty Global Infectious Disease training program at Yale University USA for his PhD studies. After completing his PhD studies, he chose to return back to Africa to concentrate on building research capacity and mentoring young generations in many tropical diseases and emerging diseases in resources limited setting of northern Uganda. He has managed over 32 research projects. He has supervised 4 PhD and over 25 MSc students to completion and published widely in the different field of natural sciences and medical research. He was able to establish a Bioscience Research Lab at the old medical school at Gulu University with support from Uganda government, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Belgium government and Seeding labs Boston, USA. Thia Biosciences lab has since then moved to the Gulu University Multifunctional Research Laboratories. During the peak of COVID-19 pandemic, Prof. Echodu managed to established a COVID-19 diagnostic lab at Gulu University that still continues to offer COVID-19 testing to the public and doing genomic sequencing of new variants of SAS-CoV-2 virus. Prof Echodu became the first Director of Gulu University Multifunctional Research Laboratories in 2018 where he serves until todate.
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