The VIB-IPBO organized an information webinar session as part of the call for new cohorts of the Open Doors Fellowship Program for 2023-2025. According to the Open Doors’ Program Coordinator, Laura Cortada, the information session exposed participants to the new guidelines and opportunities available for interested women researchers in Africa.
The Open Doors Fellowship Program is a 20-month training and mentoring program split into two phases of an initial 3-month research stage in Belgium, and a second phase that lasts 17 months. During the program, Fellows are given incentives that support their research work at their duty stations, and are exposed to peer support and mentoring network.
The selected Fellows are empowered with new skills, assisted with expanding their network, and their scientific visibility is also enhanced. The webinar showcased the experiences of the first set of cohorts and their success stories, and allowed participants to ask questions to help explain the modalities of the program.
The low global retention rate of women in academia is a phenomenon that affects women researchers along their career path and has a negative impact on future generation of scientists. The fellowship program is positioned to address the scientific leakage which leads to a loss of competitiveness, talent, creativity, and financial resources in research institutions across the world.
The webinar featured Adeola Ajayi, one of the Fellows in the 1st cohort working on “Genetic improvement of crops – development of protocol for micropropagation of African Yam Bean.”
She explained that her research experience in Belgium working on disinfection of protocols for African yam bean seed and nodal cuttings among other areas has helped improve the percentage of shoot formation to 100%, which used to be lower than 30%.
According to Ajayi, the previous shoot rate per plant generated was 2, but following her laboratory experience in Belgium, she has recorded an average increase of 5 shoots per plant. This she said is important for rapid multiplication of clean seeds.
Anique Godjo, one of the Fellows working on evaluating the susceptibility of sweet potato cultivars to virus pathogens said that her research stay in Belgium under the Open Doors Fellowship Program exposed her to new research techniques. “I was taught how to carry out meristem culture, something I didn’t know how to do before Belgium.”
During her session, Godjo said she was also able to work on other plants like roses and apples as part of her training experience; she worked on tissue culture and phenotyping as well.
Sharing her experience, one of the Fellows from Mali, Madina Diancoumba, who is working on sorghum, the fifth most important cereal in the world, said one of the reasons for working on this crop is the low production rate due to several factors such as climate change, severe drought, and genotype and environment interaction among others.
Diancoumba added that she introduced her research work’s data across six countries in West Africa to her laboratory activities in Belgium by applying statistical tools to these datasets to be able to define the homogenous production environment.
“During my stay in ILVO, I was able to learn how to pre-process and post-process the dataset I had previously gathered”, she said.
While the 1st cohort of the Open Doors Fellowship Program are undergoing the second phase of their training in their various duty stations across Africa, the call for the 2nd cohort of Fellows is presently ongoing and the number of finalists has increased to eight.
The Fellowship’s application deadline is slated for 10 January 2023, and is being supported by Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad – Universitaire Ontwikkelingssamenwerking (VLIR-UOS), Enable-Belgium, Ghent University, and Nematology Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (NEMEDUSSA).
Contributed by Timilehin Osunde
Contributed by
Related news