Professor Karen Day is a Professor of Population Biology in the School of Biomedical Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. She has expertise in malaria genomic epidemiology, infectious disease epidemiology and global public health.
She is trained in both microbiology and population sciences. She has extensive experience as a senior academic administrator in science, medicine and public health.
Professor Day completed her Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne and PhD studies in molecular parasitology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. She did postdoctoral studies in infectious disease epidemiology at the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research and Imperial College, London. She has held academic positions at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Imperial College in London, University of Oxford, New York University and now at University of Melbourne. She runs her malaria research group based in the Bio21 Institute as a member Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity.
Professor Day’s main research interest is studying malaria parasite variation in humans and mosquitos to better understand the “many epidemiologies of malaria”. She is a founder of the field of malaria genomic epidemiology combining genomics, field and computational approaches to improve global malaria surveillance. She has also pioneered molecular studies of mechanisms of social networking among malaria parasites. Through her research she has gained extensive international experience by leading malaria epidemiology field studies in East, West and Southern Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea and South America. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Centres of Excellence for Malaria Research at the US NIAID at NIH.
Professor Day has held senior leadership positions in Universities in the UK, US and Australia. Highlights include being recruited to University of Oxford in 1993 to one of the world’s leading infectious disease epidemiology research centres. She was appointed Fellow of Hertford College becoming one of the few women “dons” in science at Oxford. She was soon promoted to Reader then Professor for her teaching, scholarship and leadership. During her ten years at Oxford she was a Founding Partner in the Wellcome Trust Centre for Epidemiology of Diseases and the Peter Medawar Centre for Pathogen Evolution. Both Centres were set up to investigate emerging infectious disease epidemics around the globe. From 2004 Professor Day moved to New York University School of Medicine where she held several senior academic leadership roles involved in promoting global public health. She was Chair of the Department of Medical Parasitology; Director of the Institute of Urban and Global Health and Director of a Masters Program in Global Public Health. Most recently she was the Dean of Science at University of Melbourne from 2014 to 2019 while continuing her malaria research at Bio21. As Dean she promoted STEM engagement as a member of the Board of the Australian Science Media Centre from 2014 to 2019. She was a member of the Board of Science Gallery International from 2014-2019 and played a foundational role in developing Science Gallery Melbourne, designed to ignite creativity in 15 to 25 year olds by the collision of art and science.
Awards for scientific achievement and leadership include election as an Emeritus Fellow at Hertford College, Oxford. In 2015 she won the Advance Global Australian Award and Advance Life Sciences Award. She was made Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor by the University of Melbourne in 2018 and a Member of the Order of Australia AM in 2020 for distinguished services to science and global health.
Find out more about Karen Day's experience
Karen Day's highlights
FEATURED Journal article
Evolution of Antimalarial Drug Resistance Markers in the Reservoir of Plasmodium falciparum Infections in the Upper East Region of Ghana.
Read moreKaren Day's selected work
Impact of seasonality and vector contract on population structure of P.falciparum (R01-TW0..
Research Grant
Discovering the deadly diversity of malaria
NEWS ARTICLE
Competition for hosts modulates vast antigenic diversity to generate persistent strain str..
Journal article
Temporal strain structure and response to interventions in a high endemicity region of Pla..
Research Grant
GLOBAL STRUCTURE OF THE VAR GENES ENCODING THE MAJOR VARIANT SURFACE ANTIGEN OF PLASMODIUM..
Conference Proceedings
P.falciparum var gene diversity and malaria control
Research Grant
Karen Day's selected work
Projects
Displaying the 3 most recent projects by Karen Day.
Project Types
3
Research Grant
Scholarly Works
Displaying the 10 most recent scholarly works by Karen Day.
News
Displaying the 1 most recent news article by Karen Day.
Honours, Awards and Fellowships
Member of the Order of Australia
Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor
Advance Global Australian Award
Advance Global Life Sciences Award
Emeritus Fellow Hertford College , Oxford 2005 to present
Ellison Senior Scholar in Global Infectious Diseases 2004-2008
Credentials
Positions
Positions
Professor Of Population Biology
Microbiology And Immunology
Honorary
Doherty Institute
Education
Education
PHD
University of Melbourne
Bachelor of Science honours
University of Melbourne