THRIVE to Research Excellence (THRIVE-2)

THRiVE (hereafter called THRiVE-1) was established in 2009 with the underlying10-year vision of developing a regional network of research excellence, including some of the best universities and research institutes in East Africa(EA) with support from two leading UK universities (LSHTM and UC). Our currentvision is that by 2030 Africa will lead research that has a major impact on health in the region and make significant contributions to world health. In five years, we have built a robust network that has led to strong and productive multidisciplinary collaborations in training, research, supervisionand mentorship. We recruited the best applicants and linked them with leading research groups in EA, a strategy that has spawned more than 400 publications between THRiVE-1 partners since 2010. The excellent PhD and post-doctoral fellows we recruited are emerging as potential research leaders. We made significant efforts to improve institutional capacity in research management and public engagement. Building on this successful research training and mentorship platform, our strategy in THRiVE-2 is to significantly and rapidly enhance the transformation of East African universities into world class research hubs, byspearheading the transition of PhD and post-doctoral fellows into health research leaders. We aim to continue strengthening the THRiVE-1 network to harness synergies to groom and mentor the most promising young scientists trained in THRIVE-1 and others selected in THRIVE-2 to become independent, internationally-recognised research leaders doing excellent research that addresses EA's priority health problems. We will continue to support the uptake of research findings and innovations into policy and practice. We will focus our strengths that have emerged in the past 5 years in key areasof infectious diseases/neglected tropical diseases (IDs/NTDs), maternal, neonatal and reproductive health (MN/RH) and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) (Figure 1): all of which are major and priority and emerging health problems in the region. We have identified more than 300 potential supervisors and mentors across the Consortium, including world leaders, doing cutting-edge research in these themes. To ensure a continuing pipeline, we will continue to seek out, recruit and mentor the best young scientists in EA who have creative and bold ideas at undergraduate, Masters, PhD, and post-doctoral levels and provide them with training, supervision, mentorship and excellent research environments. We willensure that women scientists make up a significant proportion of those recruited through our established merit based recruitment process. We will provide protected research time to successful applicants and use the mentoringand personal development planning tools developed during THRiVE-1, in collaboration with the Malaria Capacity Development Consortium (MCDC) and the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, to facilitate their transition into research leaders who will, in turn, mentor a new generation of researchers. We will continue to take advantage of the LSHTM and UC's staff development programmes to provide training in leadership skills and public engagement and also continue to benefit from the expertise of the MUII consortium in immunology and bioinformatics to produce the world-class scientists that will rise to the current and future health challenges in EA.