Dr Kitchin, Dale

Dr Dale Kitchin obtained his PhD in Microbiology and Biotechnology from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2017 following undergraduate degrees in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the same institution. After completing his PhD he joined the HIV Virology Section at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases as a postdoctoral research fellow, under the mentorship of Prof Penny Moore.
His postdoctoral research focused on delineating the ontogeny of anti-HIV-1 broadly neutralising antibody lineages, using a combination of cellular assays, high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatic methods.
Since 2021 he has been a Senior Medical Scientist at the same unit, where he is responsible for managing several HIV and SARS-CoV-2 research projects, including the virus surveillance component of the IAVI ADVANCE program, and supervising postgraduate students. His current research looks at how cross-reactive neutralising antibody lineages develop following viral infection or vaccination, and assessing the impact that viral genetic diversity has on the effectiveness of vaccines and monoclonal antibody therapies for pathogens that have direct public health implications for African populations.