The organizing faculty:
IBUKUN AKINRINADE (PhD student, IGC, Portugal)
Ibukun Akinrinade is a PhD student in the Integrative Behavioural Biology group, in the Gulbenkian Institute of Science (IGC), Oeiras, Portugal. She has an Anatomy and Cell Biology background from University of Ilorin, Nigeria, where she studied the toxicological effects of antimalarial drugs misuse. Her passion for neurobehavioural research led her to pursue a one-year training in the University of Bordeaux, France, to study the roles of stress systems in addiction.
Currently, she is interested in understanding how the neuropeptide-oxytocin modulates social behaviour using zebrafish as a model system, with available genetic, behavioural and molecular biology tools.
Ibukun attended the 2nd IBRO school on Neurogenetics, organized by TReND in Africa, in 2013. Since then she has been an active TReND volunteer and one of the organizers of the pan-African TReND course on Bioinformatics approaches in Genomics, in Kenya, in 2014.
CONCETTA VALERIO (Postdoctoral fellow, IGC, Portugal)
Concetta Valerio is a postdoc fellow in the Plant Stress Signaling group at the IGC. She received her PhD at the University of Bologna, Italy, in Plant Molecular Physiology, and then she worked as a postdoc fellow at the Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC), Sweden. Her research has been focused on plant carbohydrate metabolism under osmotic stress conditions, and on the correlation between changes in the carbohydrates pool and the phosphoproteome profile in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Maintaining her interest in carbon metabolism, she is currently studying how abiotic stress can influence carbohydrate allocation, by altering transcriptional gene regulation and posttranslational protein modifications.
Concetta has developed remarkable expertise in DNA cloning, phosphoprotein analysis, recombinant protein production, gene expression analysis and genetics.
DORA SZAKONYI (Postdoctoral fellow, IGC, Portugal)
Dora completed her PhD in the Max-Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (Cologne, Germany). Since then she gained valuable research experience in Plant Molecular Biology in the UK and Belgium. In Portugal, her main research line is focusing on posttranscriptional gene regulation and changes in alternative splicing in response to abiotic stress. She helped to organize several scientific events and participated in training of future scientists.
DR JUDITH NKIRUKA ALAWA (Lecturer, Bingham University, Karu, Nasarawa State, Nigeria)
She holds a Ph.D in Anatomy from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria Kaduna State. Her research focuses on histology and cell biology of tissues affected in parasitic infections caused by Leishmania and Trypanosome species. Other areas of research interest are comparative anatomy and phylogenetic characterization of the African Giant Pouched rat. She has presented her research findings at national and international meetings and published them in several peer-reviewed journals. Her research has earned her several awards and nominations both locally and internationally.
Dr Alawa teaches and supervises students at graduate and undergraduate levels. She is involved in teaching anatomy courses to students of basic medical sciences, medicine, pharmacy and nursing. She has also mentored postgraduate students in research in anatomical and biomedical sciences in Nigeria. Currently, her team is developing a staining kit from locally sourced Lawsonia inermis (henna) plant for study of histological sections from animal tissues. They hope this will help improve local content initiative.
Outside research and teaching, Dr Alawa is involved in community outreach programmes through her pet project “Save the Brain Campaign” which focuses on teaching elementary school pupils the dangers of drug abuse while learning the anatomy of the brain in a fun-filled manner. Recently, she has collaborated with Teaching and Research in Natural Sciences for Development in Africa (TReND) organization to set up a functional molecular biology laboratory which will enhance the capacity of the staff and research students of Bingham University. She hopes that in the near future it will transform into a Center of Excellence in Cell and Molecular Biology in this part of Nigeria.
COLIN ADRAIN (Principal investigator, IGC, Portugal)
Colin Adrain is a Principal Investigator at the IGC, where he leads the Membrane Traffic group. His research focuses on how the biogenesis and trafficking of membrane proteins coordinates cellular signaling under normal physiological conditions and how this contributes to disease. His research work employs cellular biochemistry, molecular biology and mouse models of disease. He has extensively used the CRISPR-Cas9 system to develop mutant mice with altered trafficking functions.
Colin has relevant teaching and supervising experience in European Doctoral and Master’s programs. Moreover, he is part of a training programme aimed at African and East Timorese students to prepare them to pursue a scientific career and train future teachers.
Colin has acted as an ad-hoc reviewer for several prominent journals including EMBO J, FEBS J, Cell Death and Differentiation, Cell Death and Disease, Cancer Research, Experimental Cell Research, Journal of Immunology, Nature Cell Biology, Trends in Genetics.
Since 2014, he serves as a member of the editorial advisory board of the FEBS Journal and an advisory/handling editor of the ‘Viewpoints’ section of the FEBS journal where he oversees the commissioning and publishing of opinion-based articles regarding diverse topics. This work includes commissioning review articles on African science education and science policy in general.