Dr. Lerato Ndlovu is a postdoctoral fellow at the immunology labs of Dr.’s Leslie and Wong based at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban. She hails from a rural town in KZN called Estcourt, and was inspired by CSI to pursue studies in biological sciences. For her PhD she aimed to identify biological signatures of early TB treatment response with the goal to one day shorten TB treatment to less than 6 months. She is also passionate about science literacy and was awarded a science engagement grant which aimed to not only make the science community more accessible to children in rural South Africa but to also promote it as a viable career path.
For my postdoctoral fellowship, I want to characterise the spectrum of TB disease. I want to do this to increase the identification and diagnosis of ‘missing’ TB cases and contribute to eradicating TB in our lifetime. I can do this because I’m part of a research team which conducts community based TB screening to identify these cases and links those affected with health care providers.