Yvonne Ukamaka Ajamma studied Parasitology and Entomology at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Nigeria. She completed her Masters degree in Entomology at the University of Ghana in Ghana, while affiliated to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) in Ghana. Then, she obtained her PhD in Genetics from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Kenya, and was affiliated to the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Kenya.

During her studies, Yvonne applied molecular diagnostics to identify zoonotic pathogens and to determine host-vector-pathogen interactions of mosquito-borne diseases. She performed DNA barcoding and characterisation of arthropod-borne virus (arbovirus) mosquito vectors, as well as analyses of their population ecology and population genetics; and applied bioinformatics tools for discovery of potential malaria drugs in different African countries. Afterwards, she joined the bioinformatics group at Covenant University Bioinformatics Research, which is one of the H3ABioNet hubs and located in Covenant University in Nigeria. She later received the Georg Forster Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Foundation, and did a postdoc at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute in Germany on the competence of common house mosquitoes for West Nile virus. At HIOH, where she started in the Department of Pathogen Evolution in April 2024, she currently optimizes molecular diagnostics for detection of infectious disease agents in humans and animals, with focus on high throughput sequencing (HTS) and especially long-read field-deployable approaches.