In October 2024, I finally achieved something I’d wanted to do for a long time: travel to the African continent for work and teach my bioinformatics skills to people who need them.
Together with fantastic colleagues—Pieter Monsieurs, Selien Oostvogels, and Oren Tzfadia—from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp (ITM), we headed to Addis Ababa to teach foundational bioinformatics to Ethiopian researchers. The course took place at the Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI). We welcomed students from several institutes, including the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), Jimma University, and the University of Gondar.
Arriving in Addis was already an experience—quite different from anything I’d done before. Betty, our local scientist friend (Bethlehem Adnew), made us feel incredibly welcome and introduced us to Ethiopian culture—not only when we arrived, but throughout our two-week stay. She was amazing, and we owe a lot of the good vibes during the course to her.
🧬 Over two weeks at AHRI, we delivered a bioinformatics course focused on microbial genomics.
🐧🪱 Week 1: Participants mastered the Linux command line and built a variant-calling pipeline specifically for Plasmodium amplicon sequencing data.
🦠 Week 2: They applied these skills to individual projects spanning cholera, Plasmodium, and virology—turning concepts into analysis and results.
We had a great time with the course participants. They were eager to learn, kind, and genuinely curious about bioinformatics. Day after day, they brought thoughtful questions, put in thehours, and took real strides as future bioinformaticians. I couldn’t imagine a better situation. I’m deeply grateful for the experience, and for having experienced Ethiopian hospitality. Identifying the need for bioinformatics, in a country facing a heavy infectious, disease burden, human genetic disorders, and a clinical system under stress, left me with a strong motivation to return and keep supporting these talented people. Ethiopia is home to amazing people and impactful research, and it was an honor to play a small part in supporting this community.
This course was a joint effort between ITM, AHRI, and the University of Antwerp. I’m deeply thankful to everyone who made it possible, including the team who helped us acquire funding and develop the course materials. Special thanks to my fellow instructors for their expertise and great personalities: Selien Oostvogels 🍻, Oren Tzfadia 🍻, Pieter Monsieurs 🍻, and Bethlehem Adnew ⭐⭐.
