Call for Application: Africa CDC - Pathogen Genomics and Bioinformatics Fellowship Program

Call for Application: Africa CDC – Pathogen Genomics and Bioinformatics Fellowship Program, April 4 2023

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Introduction

The Africa CDC – Pathogen Genomics and Bioinformatics Fellowship Program is a continental workforce development program targeting national public health institutions and laboratories in the African Union Member States to improve the use of pathogen genomic data for outbreak detection and disease surveillance. The fellowship is program is implemented in partnership with the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM), and regional centers of excellence.

Who should apply:

The program is open to National public health institutes (NPHIs) and National Reference Laboratories (NRLs) personnel who wish to gain experience in NGS sequencing or analyzing pathogen genomic sequence data. Applicants should have a minimum of BSc degree and be a citizen of the African Union Member States.

Fellowship Program:

The fellowship has two tracks – i) a wet-lab track focusing of end-to-end protocols for next-generation sequencing of pathogens; and ii) a dry-lab track with a focus on public health bioinformatics data analytics, interpretation, and reporting.

The fellowship program aims to support technical experts and future leaders in public health pathogen genomics and bioinformatics in Africa.

Training led by continent-based educational and professional subject matter experts

Training at State-of-the-art facilities across the continent

Multilingual fellowship program

The fellowship program has the following objectives:

To train pathogen genomics and bioinformatics workforce to improve outbreak detection, investigation & disease surveillance in Africa

To contribute to strengthening the prevention, preparedness, surveillance, and control of infectious diseases while supporting the implementation of Africa’s New Public Health Order

To contribute to knowledge and technology transfers and capacity building within and between African Union Member States

Potential candidates and host institutions:

We are anticipating at least 25 fellows for the 2023 cohort

15 host institutions across Africa. Applicants should provide evidence of the host institution’s agreement to accept the fellow for the duration of the fellowship period. Africa CDC and ASLM will support fellows to identify host institutions.