Our People
Dr Kalina Naidoo
Junior Research Fellow
Post-doctoral researcher, DPAG
DPhil, MSc (Oxford); Master’s, Bachelor’s (Hons) (University of Kwa-Zulu Natal)
Kalina completed her DPhil in Psychiatry at the University of Oxford (St Catherine’s College, 2021), where she researched the effects of gut microbial products on the anterior pituitary gland. Her DPhil was fully funded by the Commonwealth Scholarship. She also completed a master’s by Research in Psychiatry at the University of Oxford (St Edmund Hall, 2016) fully funded by the Cecil Renaud Oversees Scholarship, as well as a Masters degree, Honours degree (cum laude) and undergraduate degree (cum laude) in Medical Sciences at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (South Africa) which was funded by the National Research Fund of South Africa.
She has always been interested in neurodegeneration and worked on HIV-Associated Dementia back home in South Africa during her master’s degree, looking at potential autophagic effects of the HIV-1 Tat protein, and wanted to return to the field and found herself intrigued by the research output of the Wade-Martins’ lab.
Kalina’s current project in the Wade-Martins’ lab is a GSK project, where she works with Dr Brent Ryan, investigating the mitochondrial and lysosomal changes in primary fibroblasts derived from patients with Parkinson’s Disease. She is especially passionate about PD from an African perspective, as with an aging population in the developing world, neurodegenerative disorders will soon be a great burden to health systems that do not have the financial resilience to cope, and in the future, she would like to focus on projects with a sub-Saharan perspective.
She is passionate about teaching, and tutor neuroscience to undergraduates in the Oxford Prospects and Global Development programme throughout the year. She is also a keen advocate for increasing access into STEM from underrepresented demographics (lower income, POC) and has done mentorship and access work throughout her graduate years and plans to continue. She welcomes contact from anyone seeking advice or who has a programme geared towards access initiatives in the university.