Dr Vicky Lynne Baillie

Dr Vicky Lynne Baillie (PhD in Clinical Virology) is a scientist at the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics (VIDA) Research Unit of the University of the Witwatersrand where she leads the laboratory aspects of the Child Health and Mortality Prevention study as well as two other mortality aetiology studies. She has been integrally involved in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine trial in South Africa as well as studies looking into the surveillance of COVID-19 in hospitalised patients and the health care workers that care for them. She is also co-PI on a grant funded study which has allowed Wits VIDA to expand into Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and which has allowed her to secure additional funding for sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 genome across numerous studies.

Vicky’s research portfolio focuses on the molecular detection of the aetiology of disease which includes the validation and optimisation of multiple assays including microfluidic applications and hopes to expand Wits VIDA’s NGS and bioinformatic capabilities even further in the near future. During her 10 years at Wits VIDA, Vicky has authored and co-authored over 30 peer reviewed journal articles and is currently supervising five post graduate students.