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.
This summer, my work with the student branch of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Student Council (SC) took me to Finland. Through the SC, I’ve been lucky to help organise symposia for early-career researchers in bioinformatics and computational biology; spaces where people share ideas, build skills, and grow their networks.
TBA
From Metz to Vic-sur-Seille - June/July 2024
We spent a week hiking a section of the GR5, starting in Metz and ending in Vic-sur-Seille, crossing the quiet and green landscapes of the Lorraine region. It was very much a rainy edition, but returning to Metz, where we had arrived the year before, made the start feel familiar and special.
This year marked an important milestone for us: the first conference presentation of the SquiDBase project. We had the pleasure of presenting it (as a poster) at London Calling, the flagship conference of Oxford Nanopore Technologies.
Pitching from the slopes of a ski resort? It turns out it is possible.
Thanks to the FUFE program, I was selected to take part in the Tahko ski lift pitching competition in Finland. Together with participants from several YUFE partner universities, including the University of Antwerp, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the University of Eastern Finland, the University of Cyprus, and the University of Bremen, this was an intense and memorable experience.
Hiking in Austria's Pitztal with My Buddy Jente
At the age of 29, I had my first summer experience in genuine mountains. This was only my second encounter with the Alps, with the first time being a ski trip during my sixth year of primary school.
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During my PhD at the University of Antwerp and the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, I studied a serovar of Salmonella named 'Concord'. It was of particular interest as it was rarely reported yet notorious for its antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and global spread via Ethiopian adoptees.