Converting plant waste to biofuel

Moi University

Department of Chemical & Process Engineering

Kenya

Faculty and staff at Moi University

About the department

Located in Western Kenya, Moi University is Kenya’s second-oldest public university.

The Department of Chemical & Process Engineering is Kenya’s only accredited chemical engineering program.

Impact on development

The department is developing an affordable way to convert biowaste from the region’s agriculture sector, into biofuel.

Meet the Awardee

“Equipment would result in graduate research, leading to patents and publications. New technology would be developed and tested to fulfill national aspirations.”

Dr. Anil Kumar

Moi University

About the institution

Location:

Kenya

Year established:

1992

Number of faculty:

10

Number of students impacted annually:

400 undergraduate, 25 graduate

Why Seeding Labs?

Equipment is needed to support additional research by faculty members and graduate students. Masters students in the department routinely take 5 years to complete a 2-year program due to lack of equipment, and the range of research topics with which they can successfully engage is limited.

Did you know?

Two other departments at Moi University received Instrumental Access shipments in 2017.

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Al Ozonoff, PhD
Director of Pandemic Preparedness, the Broad Institute, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Al Ozonoff, PhD, CPPS is Senior Advisor to Dr. Pardis Sabeti and Chief of Staff of the Sabeti Lab. In these roles, he provides administrative leadership and senior scientific expertise across the full range of lab activities and research. He provides further programmatic support as the U.S. Director for the Sentinel Program. Al is Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a faculty scientist within the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Al applies his training in mathematics, statistics, epidemiology, and data science in pursuit of population-based improvement in the health of children and adults. His research focuses on the development and application of methods for surveillance of health and disease. As a surveillance methodologist, he is most engaged in areas of public health surveillance, infectious disease surveillance, and hospital-based surveillance with an emphasis on patient safety and healthcare quality.

Al’s graduate and post-doctoral training was in mathematics (University of California, Santa Barbara, under D. Darren Long) and biostatistics (Harvard School of Public Health, under Marcello Pagano). He has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications throughout more than 20 years of research experience. He was Principal Investigator of two R01 grant awards: a 3-year project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) BioSense Program, “Improving syndromic surveillance by data integration” (R01 PH000021-02), and a 5-year project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), “Patient safety surveillance using machine learning and free text clinical” (R01 HS026246-01A1).

As a leading expert during the early phases of the pandemic, Al led the Clinical and Data Coordinating Center for IMPACC, a national immunophenotyping study of COVID-19 funded by the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIH/NIAID). In 2016-17, he was one of 12 Harvard Medical School Fellows in Bioethics.

Outside of work, Al enjoys spending time with his family and learning from teachers in contemplative traditions. He has played semi-professional football for over 25 years, most recently with the Randolph Oilers of the East Coast Football League.