Julian Adong, Medical Officer and Junior Investigator, Uganda
To attend taught courses in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and also a one-to-one mentorship in peer reviewed manuscript writing.
Muhammad Faraz Anwar, Research Associate, Pakistan
To visit the Department of Cancer Immunology and AIDS, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, to learn in silico drug screening and discovery techniques. Drug-protein molecular dynamics simulations will be applied to examine the antiviral potential of natural compounds and their derivatives against HIV.
Abou Abdallah Malick Diouara, PhD Student, Senegal
To visit the Bioinformatics laboratory and PharmaQAM at the Faculty of Science, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada to undertake training in comparative genomics and phylogenetic analysis and to gain advanced skills in computational methods to investigate viral evolution.
Diana Faini, Medical & Research Officer, Tanzania
To attend the European course in Tropical Epidemiology (ECTE) at the Swiss TPH, in Basel Switzerland.
Joel Francis, PhD Student, Tanzania
To visit two South African research institutions MRC-SA and Wits-RHI to be exposed to and learn from two separate ongoing alcohol and HIV intervention studies in young people. The MRC-SA implements a clinical trial to reduce hazardous alcohol use among HIV patients and Wits-RHI is implementing a study on linkage to care among young people
Tinashe Gede, Senior Registrar and Clinical Research Fellow, Zimbabwe
To visit the University of Cape Town to learn skills in point-of-care ultrasound, specifically FASH (Focussed Assessment with Sonography for HIV-associated tuberculosis), FATE (Focussed Assessed Transthoracic Echocardiography), basic to advanced lung ultrasound and ultrasound-guided resuscitation.
Yanina Ghiglione, PhD student, Argentina
To visit the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, University of Melbourne in Australia, to acquire expert training in molecular and immune techniques that help define the size and composition of the reservoir in acute/early HIV infected individuals.
George Mondinde Ikomey, Research Scientist, Cameroon
To visit the Division of Medical Virology, Department of Pathology, Stellenbosch University Tugerberg to analyse clinical samples for genomic (Saga Sequencing), proviral loads and molecular modelling.
Michael Muganga Kikonyogo, Laboratory Technologist, Uganda
To visit the Centre for HIV and STIs, National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) South Africa, to learn the technique of transformation and production of pseudo viruses that are instrumental in TZM-bl neutralisation assays used for vaccine research.
Godfather Kimaro, Clinic Research Scientist and Part-Time PhD Student, Tanzania
To visit London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK for 5 months for face-to-face guidance and to attend a taught course on “regression methods for health economic evaluation” both of which will help to lead to successful completion of PhD research dissertation on the economic evaluation of a health systems intervention to improve ART delivery in Tanzania.
Happiness Kumburu, Laboratory Scientist, Tanzania
To visit Technical University of Denmark, Department of Microbial Genomics and Antimicrobial Resistance, to train in next generation sequencing of infectious disease agents and analysis of data obtained using bioinformatics tools.
Tchapda Arlette Laure, Ph.D. Student in Biochemistry, Cameroon
To visit the Institute of Infection and Global Health, University of Liverpool to be trained on HIV-1 full length genome sequencing. This technique will be transferred to the CIRCB where others would be trained to build capacity and sustainability in molecular techniques.
Nafissatou Leye, PhD Student, Senegal
To visit the Department of Epidemiology in Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA to learn the technique and applications of New Generation of Sequencing (NGS) in HIV research and monitoring. To also acquire competency in phylogenetic analysis in order to determine the dynamic and evolutionary history of HIV-1 sequences for genetic diversity surveillance.
Neema Ramadhani Mosha, Tutorial Assistant, Tanzania
To visit DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA) in Stellenbosch, South Africa to receive mentorship in analysis of longitudinal HIV data, obtain skills on report writing and publication. To also attend a short-course on Advanced Epidemiological and Statistical Methods at Bristol University, UK followed by a 2 weeks attachment at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) under Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health for mentorship on developing advanced analysis skills and research portfolio.
Muchaneta Mugabe, Medical Laboratory Scientist, Zimbabwe
To visit the AIDS Virus Research Laboratory, Centre of HIV and STI at the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), South Africa to be trained in laboratory processing of HIV drug resistant. The course will cover HIV-1 RNA extraction from plasma and DBS samples, PCR amplification and population sequencing of the protease and reverse transcriptase gene, as well as relevant data analysis, such as sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis.
Elizabeth Nakinobe, Youth Peer Counsellor, Social Worker and Research Assistant, Uganda
To visit the HIV Counselling Department at Mildmay Uganda to contribute to continuing professional development (CPD); acquire more skills in comprehensive health services (including ART, HIV counselling and testing and paediatric HIV care), child counselling and therapeutic communication and relevant health research (including operational research on adolescents, treatment adherence and assessing HIV risky behaviour; and more qualitative research knowledge and skills (such as the use of focus group discussions, key informant interviews and semi-structured interviews).
Proscovia Naluyima Sekiziyivu, Research Scientist, Uganda
To visit the US Military HIV Research Programme Flow Core Laboratory in Maryland, USA, to perform experiments to investigate innate cell function in HIV-infected Ugandans. To also undertake training on performance of virus infectivity and inhibition assays and measuring gene expression in HIV-specific cells. The knowledge attained will be used to further PhD studies in the role of innate immunity on HIV pathogenesis.
Robert Ntalaka, Senior Programme Officer, Uganda
To visit London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Public Health & Policy to attend a training course in Qualitative Methodologies for application in proposed research.
Tinashe Nyazika, MSc. Student/Medical Laboratory Scientist, Zimbabwe
To visit Canisius-Wilhelmina Hospital (CZW), Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease, the Netherlands. The visit will focus on receiving mentorship, conducting research as well as learning molecular techniques of typing pathogenic Cryptococcus species and other fungal pathogens. Additionally, to collaborate on a project with their hospital infection control team.
Justin Okello, Data Programmer, Uganda
To visit Demographic Surveillance Site (DSS) in Agincourt, South Africa to acquire specific database programming skills to establish and scale up data linkage between public health facilities with ongoing HIV surveys. This will help to address programming challenges in linking up survey data with general health care information.
Perry Okoto, Clinical Data Manager, Uganda
To visit DF/Net Research Inc. in Seattle, Washington, USA, to continue data management training and hands-on experience that will provide a solid foundation in the DataFax System Management software and with the tasks required to manage the data for large-scale international clinical trials. Areas of interest will include CRF and eCRF design, DataFax study setup, edit check programming, system administration and clinical trial management.
Shatha Omar, PhD student in MCB, South Africa
To visit the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Schulish School of Medicine & Dentistry at University of Western Ontario, to attend a training course on generating infectious molecular clones (IMCs) using the yeast recombination/gap repair method and HIV replication kinetics.
Helen Omuh, Project Director, Nigeria
To visit the John Hopkins School of Public Health Global Research Site in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, South Africa to learn research skills and increase clinical competence on how to develop, implement and evaluate HIV preventive services and studies for African key populations and to learn how to safely conduct HIV research among key populations in the challenging environments of stigma and criminalisation.
Ezenwa James Onyemata, Senior Program Officer, Nigeria
To visit the AIDS Virus Research Laboratory/Centre for HIV and STI, National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Johannesburg, South Africa, to receive training in the use of next generation sequencing platform for viral genome sequencing.
Angelica Ospina, PhD Student, Mexico
To visit the University of California in San Diego for a taught course on survival analysis to fit statistical models that can identify association between the age at first drug and the duration between age at first drug and age at first injection, risk behaviours for HIV with a sample of chronic heroin users in three northern cities in Mexico. This analysis will ensure successful completion of the PhD research dissertation on trajectories of drug use and HIV in Northern Mexico and a peer-reviewed publication can be prepared.
Zahra Rikhtegaran Tehrani, PhD candidate in Medical Biotechnology, Iran
To visit the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine to undertake PhD thesis work. The main purpose of this project is optimization of a p31 based immunoassay developed by the Pasteur Institute of Iran for discrimination of recent and non-recent HIV-infected individuals.
Ismaila Thera, Data Manager, Mali
To visit Office of CyberInfrastructure and Computational Biology (OCICB), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious, Diseases (NIAID) and National Institute of Health (NIH) for training in DataFax and good clinical data management practices (GCDMP), statistical programming tools and receive a mentorship from NIH/OCICB through the development of a Data Fax database to follow-up HIV positive volunteers at a malaria vaccine testing centre in Bancoumana, Mali.
Francois Uwinkindi, HIV Epidemiology Senior Officer, Rwanda
To visit AIDS Clinical Trials Unit, Stanford University, USA to learn the design and practical implementation of clinical trials together with advanced quantitative research data management and interpretation.
Godfrey Zziwa, PhD Postgraduate Student, Uganda
To visit the Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Colorado to receive training in the Luminex assay, qRT-PCR and multicolour flow cytometry to better understand the role of monocytes and the innate immune system in HIV-associated cryptococcal infection and its relationship to Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome in HIV-associated cryptococcal infection.