Alliance Workshops
The Alliance, made possible with generous support from private donors, holds Summer Research Institutes at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. These programs consist of 5 to 6 independent workshops that provide training in molecular biology, immunology, bioinformatics, next generation sequencing, and grant writing. Notable achievements include:
- Trained >300 students from Uganda and Zimbabwe in cutting edge scientific techniques
- Produced $100,000 worth of enzymes for molecular biology with the ability to sustain local production indefinitely. The group at Makerere to established a diagnostics facility for COVID-19 that processed over 1 million samples using enzyme they purified in house.
- >$20,000 in travel grants secured by Makerere students
- Skills utilized in multiple publications
- Trained a cadre of local trainers
- Established new research connections and partnerships
- Obtained additional funding for UC Berkeley-Makerere partnerships
In 2022, we revamped the summer workshop structure to focus on a specific research theme, allowing students to acquire practical skills while addressing real research questions. We initiated this approach with a compact workshop dedicated to COVID-19, utilizing human samples to explore immune responses to COVID-19 in Uganda, studying the impact of the microbiome on COVID-19, and analyzing the spread of COVID-19 variants in Uganda between 2020 and 2021. This initiative yielded two manuscripts and sparked the submission of multiple grant applications.
