As Team Leader for Strategic Partnerships and Communications, Lara Pandya oversees the external relations and international cooperation activities of Global Health EDCTP3, including monitoring and evaluation. She is responsible for creating and nurturing collaboration and partnerships with both the Member States participating in Global Health EDCTP3 and a wide variety of public and private stakeholders. This includes designing and executing joint initiatives with strategic partners and facilitating the coordination and alignment of European and African national research programmes around a joint research agenda on infectious diseases. She initially joined EDCTP as a Project Officer in 2007.
Lara has a background in global public health and clinical research and development, with over 20 years of experience in partnership building, networking, resource mobilisation, communications, advocacy and project management for a variety of international health organisations. Lara represents EDCTP in multiple cross-funder and partner initiatives and working groups, including the Advisory Group for the Collaborative Initiative for Paediatric HIV Education and Research (CIPHER) Grant Programme and the Steering Committee of the ESSENCE on Health Research initiative, among others.
As a graduate from the University of Bristol, where she completed both her bachelors and Master of Science in Geography, Lara subsequently obtained a Master’s in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).