Fourth Meeting of the DS-I Africa Consortium
16 - 22 November 2024

Ms Fatoumata Gnine Fofana - Travel Awardee

eLwazi (Open Data Science Platform) (Post Doctoral fellow)

My interest in Bioinformatics & Data Science began after my undergraduate degree. The field of bioinformatics and Data Science is also evolving to take advantage of the latest technological advances. I conducted research with Prof. WELE and Dr. Alia in protein-protein docking by studying human and parasite protein-protein interaction based on Short Linear Motifs funded by NIH Fogarty supported training grants: West African Center of Excellence for Global Health Bioinformatics Research. I proposed a mechanism interaction of human-parasite protein-protein interaction. That helped me better understand the work I can do in the field of healthcare and medicine as a Postgraduate and gain knowledge from the experienced professors who guide me. By the end of my MSc, I knew that I wanted to pursue a long-term career in research. I also had the opportunity to work with Dr. Okella Hedmon from Uganda on designing novel putative fish-derived antimicrobial peptides that were promising against resistant strains of bacteria.
Currently, a PhD candidate working on ¨In silico analysis of protein-protein interaction networks between Human and Plasmodium falciparum for the design of vaccine candidates¨ at the African Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics of Bamako (ACE Mali) to learn more about the existing techniques being used in treatment and how improvements can be made. At the same moment, I am a PostDoc on the D-S-I Africa/ eLwazi ODSP from Mali and I am involved in different working groups focused in developing a cloud computing interconnection platform.