James Njung’e’s dream of being a Tropical Disease scientist through research and teaching is fast becoming a reality. In an exciting development that is part of the BioBRU project, he and fellow Rhodes postgraduate student Ingrid Cockburn are spending three months at the Philipps 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 in Marburg, Germany.
Njung’e, a first year PhD student, and Cockburn, a second year MSc student, are on a research visit funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as part of the “German-African collaborative research project in infectious diseases” programme.?
The Biomedical Biotechnology Research Unit (hence the interesting and more manageable acronym BioBRU) at Rhodes is doing significant research in the critical fields of malaria and cancer, and this visit is being hosted by Prof Klaus Lingelbach at the Parasitology research group in the Department of Biology at Philipps 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网. Earlier this year, one of his colleagues, Dr Jude Przyborski, an associate professor in the parasitology research group, paid a visit to BioBRU.
Prof Lingelbach is a BioBRU collaborator and his research group focuses on host-parasite interactions, including the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Both Njung’e and Cockburn are currently working on elucidating the mechanism by which the malaria parasite protects itself from stressful environmental insults, as part of a broader aim to identify and develop treatments that will curb the disease without harming the host.
This research visit, which commenced at the beginning of September, will enable them to exchange ideas and learn new techniques using the highly advanced technologies and facilities at Marburg as part of their thesis work.
Njung’e obtained a First Class Honours degree in Biochemistry and an MSc in Biotechnology from the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Kenyatta in Nairobi before joining Rhodes at the beginning of 2010. Cockburn completed a BSc majoring in Chemistry and Biochemistry at Rhodes and then obtained her BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry with distinction. Both students are working under the supervision of Prof Greg Blatch.