The Bioinformatics Incubation and Mentorship Program under Eastern African Network for Bioinformatics Training (EANBIT) granted me a prestigious bioinformatics internship and mentorship program at icipe under the Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics Unit (MBBU).
I learnt the importance of open science in the bioinformatics field. I had the chance to learn how to use collaborative tools in research including Github and Slack for communication and project management. These tools played an important role in the success of my internship through enabling efficient collaboration and communication with fellow bioinformaticians in the projects that I participated in. To date I still use Slack and GitHub in collaboration and communication in other virtual bioinformatics projects including the BOSS mini projects organized by Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya Initiative (BHKi).
On joining the program, my expectations of the bioinformatics internship were to understand, analyze and come up with relevant biological inferences to genomic data. My expectations were met as part of the program was an intense training facilitated by competent and highly motivated bioinformaticians. I learnt programming languages including bash, python and R from the basics to using the programming languages in parsing genomic data. I also enjoyed the opportunities on virtual workshops and seminars from H3Abionet and Galaxy that supplemented training offered by my trainers; Festus Nyasimi, Geoffrey Kimani, Andrew Espira and supervisor, Dr.Caleb Kibet. One of the best virtual courses that I attended was GTN Smörgåsbord: A Global Galaxy Course which covered the general introduction to the Galaxy platform, NGS analysis (DNA-seq and RNA-seq), and proteomics. I have been participating in other courses and workshops up to now. Currently, I am enrolled in a virtual online short-course organized by H3Abionet on Genomics Medicine.
The bioinformatics team at icipe is not only limited to trainers and supervisors who guided me, but also a group of EANBIT’s Master’s students in Bioinformatics. My interaction with the highly motivated MSc. students further enhanced my understanding of some concepts in bioinformatics and even guided me in troubleshooting tricks whenever I encountered some challenges.
The best part of the internship program was the problem-solving skills that I gained by engaging in the 16SrRNA analysis for H3ABionet accreditation and the development of a variant calling- pipeline for microbes using GATK. I also delighted in participating in the journal club sessions that were held biweekly on Thursday. These sessions were key to me as I gained insights and knowledge on different topics. I was quite fascinated by the presentation on Molecular digital data storage using DNA. Other than journal club sessions, was the Monday update meeting which aided me in utilizing a schedule plan and being goal-oriented.
This internship experience laid a strong foundation for me in bioinformatics and genomics and helped me in transitioning and securing other opportunities in my career. As I write this, I am an Assistant Research Officer at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Program, working with Professor Philip Bejon’s lab, leveraging control human infectious studies in studying the efficacy and safety of Malaria and Shigella vaccines. Additionally, I am also enrolled in an African Genomic Medicine Training (AGMT) 2022 course organized by H3Abionet. I am deeply grateful to the EANBIT program, and icipe for the incredible internship opportunity.