Katherine Plewes

Dr. Katherine Plewes is a clinical assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford, with research interests in malaria and tropical diseases. She completed the UBC Clinical Investigator Program and obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in clinical medicine at the University of Oxford focused on the pathophysiology of malaria. She continues to work with an international and multidisciplinary team at the Mahidol Oxford Research Unit located in Bangkok, Thailand, focused on the pathophysiology and treatment of severe malaria and the causes of fever and antimicrobial susceptibility of bacterial pathogens causing fever in low- and middle-income settings. She has extensive field experience, currently working on active projects in Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

In 2019, Dr. Plewes was awarded a three-year Canadian Institutes of Health Research Project Grant and a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Health Professional-Investigator award to assess the renoprotective role of acetaminophen in severe pediatric malaria. She is co-director of the UBC Tropical and Geographic Medicine Intensive Short Course, and Vancouver site lead for the GeoSentinel Surveillance Network, a global network that conducts surveillance of emerging infectious diseases using returning travelers as sentinels of infection. She also represents B.C. as a committee member to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) Canadian Advisory on Tropical Medicine and Travel, and designate B.C. physician to the PHAC Canadian Malaria Network.