Bioinformatics primer for Gabon

Cooperating countries: Gabon and Austria

Coordinating institution: Centre de Recherches Médicales de Lambaréné (CERMEL), Centre de Recherches Médicales de Lambaréné (CERMEL), aadegnika@cermel.org 

Partner institution: Medical University Vienna (MUW)

Project duration: 1 May 2022 - 30 April 2024

Budget: EUR 13.541

Abstract:

Bioinformatics has become an essential tool for life sciences. However, lower- and middle-income countries lag behind in the usage of computational research tools, despite their obvious usefulness in domains such as biodiversity, bio-forensics, and epidemic awareness. In this project, we plan to provide training in bioinformatics to a significant number of researchers from diverse backgrounds and institutions in Gabon with the objective enabling Gabonese research centers to perform their own bioinformatic genomic data analyses on-site.
Five Gabonese institutions who perform research or training in health or ecology have been identified. At a site visit from researchers from the Medical University of Vienna, these institutions are visited, and information on their capacity, research interests, challenges, and proficiency in bioinformatics is gathered. One of these centers, CERMEL, will act as a center of excellence, and assist the other center in infrastructure and training.
Scalable computational infrastructure is configured and maintained jointly. A training workshop in basic bioinformatics is organized for eligible staff members of the institutions.
Two staff members of CERMEL involved in bioinformatic analysis will receive hands-on training at MUW.
The experience gathered with these activities will allow the partners to conceive a larger training program in the future and oriented at other African research and training organizations.

Summary:

In this project, the necessary steps to enable research institutions in Gabon to build a basic bioinformatic infrastructure were identified and implemented. The aim was to establish the know-how from which these could  then further develop in-house analysis tools as required by their respective fields of research. This was done by an initial visit of a Gabonese data scientist based at CERMEL, a medical research center in Gabon, to the Medical University of Vienna (MUW). During this two week visit,  the groundwork for a larger bioinformatics training workshop and training course were established. Furthermore, the researcher was able to gain insights into day-to-day bioinformatics analysis workflow at MUW and, through visits with various departments (Statistics, Medical Information Management, Public health, etc) into related activities.

During a 2-week visit of a team from MUW to Gabon, a week-long training workshop was performed for scientists at several research and higher education institutions, notably the Medical University of Libreville, the Institute for Research in Tropical Ecology, the Masuku Technical University, and the International Medical Research Center Franceville. The two visitors from MUW visited centers in Libreville and Franceville to strengthen the links and met the researcher in their teams at their workplaces. Regular webinars in which researchers present and listen to presentations on bioinformatic analyses of biomedical or biodiversity data were set up and are ongoing These webinars are announced to a mailing list containing the workshop participants and an ever-growing number of Gabonese researchers interested or in need of bioinformatic expertise.