Research Hub

At the 2025 ISCB-Africa ASBCB Bioinformatics Conference in Cape Town, UWC’s Professor Alan Christoffels urged students to bridge the gap between academic research and public health. Highlighting the role of bioinformatics and genomics in disease response, Christoffels emphasized the need for data standards, cross-border collaboration, and real-world impact in managing outbreaks across Africa and beyond.

At the ISCB-Africa ASBCB Conference, Keaghan Brown presented PHA4GE’s new online course on wastewater surveillance, designed to integrate genomics, bioinformatics, and diverse learning styles. Developed with Farzaana Diedericks, the course uses an avatar-led format to teach real-time pathogen tracking through wastewater monitoring—enhancing public health capacity in Africa and globally.

Dr Joshua Levy, project scientist at Scripps Research in the US, visited the PHA4GE Secretariat hub at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) at the end of March.

Professor Alan Christoffels’ whirlwind three-day trip to Switzerland and Germany in March proved a productive one as it lay the groundwork for exciting new ventures for global bioinformatics and for PHA4GE.

PHA4GE kicked off work on malaria genomics data standards at ASTMH 2024 in New Orleans, where Alan Christoffels and Tracey Calvert-Joshua presented a funding proposal on metadata collection.

The Africa CDC hosted its second data-curation workshop in Addis Ababa, building capacity for high-quality pathogen data sharing via the Agari platform. Experts from PHA4GE, SANBI, and NCBI led the training to enhance public health data use.

Rito is a Bioinformatician at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (South Africa), specializing in bacterial pathogen genomics and public health. Passionate about bridging medical microbiology and public health, she explores metagenomic approaches for meningitis pathogen sequencing.

Prof. Alan Christoffels joined the GLOWACON Regional Conference in Addis Ababa, supporting efforts to integrate wastewater monitoring into public health systems worldwide.

With PHA4GE members spread across the globe, in-person meetups are always a valued opportunity. Several members recently gathered at the IPSN Global Partners Forum in Bangkok, Thailand (Nov 21–22, 2024) to connect, collaborate, and advance global pathogen surveillance efforts.