Biography
Kayla Barnes is a genomics researcher based at the Malawi-Liverpool Wellcome Trust. Kayla’s lab focuses on two programs that bookend the dynamics of health in low-income countries. These include tracking viral pathogens and vaccines using wastewater and other surveillance tools and understanding, at the omics cell level, why vaccines underperform in low-income countries. Kayla has helped establish pathogen and single cell sequencing in Malawi.
Research interests
Kayla’s research interests include genetics, genomics, immunology, single cell, virology, surveillance, diagnostics, immunity, sequencing, single cell transcriptomics.
Teaching
Kayla offers sequencing and single cell workshops.
Selected research publications
Maternal-infant rotavirus-specific antibody kinetics to inform timing of vaccine boosting in Malawi: An observational study – Journal: PLoS Medicine – Published: 12th September 2025
Cost-effectiveness of wastewater-based environmental surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in Blantyre, Malawi and Kathmandu, Nepal: A model-based study – Journal: PLOS Global Public Health – Published: 24th April 2025
Spatially resolved single-cell atlas unveils a distinct cellular signature of fatal lung COVID-19 in a Malawian population – Journal: Nature Medicine – Published: 20th November 2024
Wastewater-based epidemiology as a public health resource in low- and middle-income settings – Journal: Environmental Pollution – Published: 15th June 2024
Genome-wide association study identifies human genetic variants associated with fatal outcome from Lassa fever – Journal: Nature Microbiology – Published: 7th February 2024
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