Fogarty awards $5M for bioinformatics research training in Africa

September 25, 2017

Fogarty and the NIH Common Fund have announced awards through the new Global Health Bioinformatics Research Training Program. A component of the most recent round of NIH funding to support the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Initiative, the awards will provide five years of support totaling up to $5 million for interdisciplinary training for bioinformatics scientists at a network of research sites across Africa. The training will help develop skills to lead integrative teams to solve significant global health problems in Africa that are important to Africans.

African mother and young daughter stand in front of their home

Photo by MickyWiswedel/
iStock/Thinkstock

H3Africa provides opportunities for
African scientists to lead research on
genetic and environmental contributors
to local health and disease issues.

The H3Africa Initiative - a partnership between the Alliance for Accelerating Science in Africa (AESA) with support from Wellcome Trust, the African Society of Human Genetics, and the NIH - fosters genomic and epidemiological research in African scientific institutions. The Initiative provides opportunities for African scientists to lead research on genetic and environmental contributors to local health and disease issues. By training advanced bioinformatics and data science researchers on the continent, the Initiative will leverage genomics and other cutting-edge approaches.

Many Institutes and Center across NIH have partnered to support H3Africa, and NIH leadership on the Initiative comes from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the NIH Common Fund and Fogarty.

Global Health Bioinformatics Research Training Awards

Covenant University
West African Sustainable Leadership and Innovation Training in Bioinformatics Research (WASLITBRE) (Nigeria, Mali, Ghana)
Principal Investigators: Drs. Ezekiel Femi Adebiyi, Peter Amoako-Yirenkyi and Seydou Doumbia
International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE)
Eastern Africa Network for Bioinformatics Training (EANBIT) (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania)
Principal Investigator: Dr. Daniel Kanani Masiga
Makerere University
Nurturing Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Capacity in Africa (BRECA) (Uganda)
Principal Investigators: Drs. David Patrick Kateete, Daudi Jjingo, Irving King Jordan and Graeme Mardon
University of Sciences, Techniques and Technologies of Bamako, Mali
West African Center of Excellence for Global Health Bioinformatics Research Training (Mali)
Principal Investigators: Drs. Seydou Doumbia, Jian Li and Jeffrey G Shaffer