Data for Health in Africa Meeting
&
5th DS-I Africa Consortium Meeting
23 - 29 August 2025
CEDI Centre, University of Ghana, Accra

Dr Verena Ras - Participant

Cape Nature (Invited Panelist)

Dr Verena Ras is a South African scientist who has spent several years designing and delivering bioinformatics and genomics training across Africa. While completing her PhD part-time, she joined the University of Cape Town's Computational Biology Division, where she coordinated capacity-building programmes for H3ABioNet - a Pan African Bioinformatics network. Her work on blended training models have helped equip hundreds of researchers and clinicians with practical skills and have seeded new local training hubs throughout the continent. Elected Secretary of the Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training (GOBLET), and as Director on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), Verena now helps shape international curricula and advocates for open, equitable access to genomics education. She also contributes to ethical standards for genomic sampling through the Earth BioGenome Project's Sample Collection and Processing Sub-committee. Verena currently leads the Ecology team within CapeNature's Biodiversity Intelligence Unit, integrating species surveillance and ecological monitoring to inform conservation policy in the Western Cape - continuing her commitment to turning advanced data science into tangible benefits for both people and nature.