Prof Pablo Tsukayama

International Fellow, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru

Pablo is a Peruvian microbiologist with a long-standing interest in infectious diseases affecting Latin American populations. His research combines methods in clinical microbiology, genomics, bioinformatics, and infectious disease epidemiology.

Research interests

His research group uses genomic approaches to the study of infectious diseases in Peru to generate evidence that guides policy and interventions to help reduce the disease burden in local communities.

As a Sanger International Fellow, Pablo and collaborators have set up a SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance platform to study its local transmission and evolution. His group also conducts surveillance studies on drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Lima, a major TB hotspot in Latin America. He is also interested in the basic biology of Bartonella bacilliformis, the agent of Carrion’s Disease, a neglected disease endemic to high-altitude communities in the Peruvian Andes.

Career to date

He obtained his PhD in Molecular Microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis, working with Prof Gautam Dantas. Later, as a Chevening Scholar, he did an MSc in Public Health in Developing Countries at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 2017, he returned to Peru as an assistant professor of microbiology at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, where he started his undergraduate training 15 years earlier.