{"id":7801,"date":"2020-07-24T15:00:13","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/?p=7801"},"modified":"2020-07-24T15:06:58","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T15:06:58","slug":"former-fogarty-grantee-leads-covid-19-genomics-work-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/2020\/07\/24\/former-fogarty-grantee-leads-covid-19-genomics-work-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Fogarty grantee leads COVID-19 genomics work in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1595602927079{margin-top: 36px !important;}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>Former Fogarty grantee leads COVID-19 genomics work in Africa<\/h3>\n<hr>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Christian Happi is director of the African Centre of Excellence for the Genomics of Infectious Disease, and professor of molecular biology and genomics at Redeemer&#8217;s University in Nigeria. A leading genomic sequencing expert, Happi is also a visiting scientist at Harvard University. His first NIH grant was a Fogarty International Research Collaboration Award (FIRCA) and he is now a Principal Investigator on the NIH\u2019s&nbsp;Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa)&nbsp;project. He has won numerous honors for his accomplishments, including the 2019 African Prize from the Human Genome Organization.<\/p>\n<p>In 2008, I was promoted to Principal Investigator when the grant was renewed. This experience helped me become an independent investigator and further strengthened my capacity and abilities to manage research projects.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You initially studied malaria. Why was that?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It was a childhood dream for me to solve malaria, since I had multiple malaria episodes growing up. I made significant breakthroughs &#8211; from unravelling molecular markers of resistance to many antimalarial drugs, to using my genomics data to influence evidence-based antimalaria drug policy change in Nigeria. More importantly, building capacity on the African continent in the field of malaria molecular biology was most rewarding, because I can see today that many of the young African scientists that we trained are now among the leaders of malaria research across the continent.<\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=&#8221;Read More&#8221; style=&#8221;outline&#8221; color=&#8221;juicy-pink&#8221; align=&#8221;center&#8221; button_block=&#8221;true&#8221; link=&#8221;url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fic.nih.gov%2FNews%2FGlobalHealthMatters%2Fmay-june-2020%2FPages%2Fchristian-happi-genomics-research.aspx||target:%20_blank|&#8221;][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1595602927079{margin-top: 36px !important;}&#8221;] Former Fogarty grantee leads COVID-19 genomics<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[163],"class_list":["post-7801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-163"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7801"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7806,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7801\/revisions\/7806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}