Dr. Derrick Ssewanyana

Derrick joined the Alliance for Human Development, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in 2020. His research in Prof. Lye’s laboratory is centered on the impacts of maternal health, environment and behavioral risk factors on the life-course. He currently works on several projects, including a collaboration between Prof. Lye’s laboratory and the Institute for Human Development at Aga Khan University in Kenya on implementation of integrated early childhood development in an urban informal settlements of Nairobi. Derrick is also involved in research on maternal health and exposures and their impacts on child health and neurodevelopment, which is embedded in the Ontario Birth Study, a cohort at the LTRI. Derrick is a recent awardee of the prestigious 2021 Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at the University of Toronto (Department of Physiology,Temerty Faculty of Medicine) where he will work with Professors Stephen Lye and Stephen Matthews to explore new dimensions on determinants of pregnancy and birth outcomes, through the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI) project.

Derrick holds a Ph.D in Adolescent health from Utrecht University (Netherlands), where he was a recipient of the Initiative to Develop African Research Leaders fellowship, based at the KEMRI – Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya. Derrick has co-authored over 25 scientific publications in reputable journals. He has also previously worked in various capacities on public health projects in Uganda and Kenya.