Training

Melissa Deist, Iowa State University, successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation in March 2018. Her research discovered important genetic pathways associated with response to Newcastle Disease virus (NDV) infection in resistant and susceptible chicken lines. In addition to her classes and research, Melissa was also active in teaching, including hands-on training in laboratory techniques in the GIP Innovation Labs in Ghana and Tanzania.

As part of the GIP program’s commitment to training and outreach, Esinam Nancy Amuzu-Aweh, an early career research associate at the University of Ghana, was invited to participate in the 11th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production (WCGALP), which was held at the Aotea Centre in Auckland, New Zealand. This congress is the premier event for researchers, students and industry professionals involved in the genetic improvement of livestock. This years’ congress brought together 1,000 delegates from all over the world.

A three-day workshop was organized by the Innovative Agricultural Research Institute (iAGRI) staff at Ohio State University and hosted by the Sokoine University of Agriculture from the 14th to 16thof September under the sponsorship of the Norman Borlaug Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture Program (Borlaug LEAP). The forum was attended by 50 participants from 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the US making a total of 12 countries represented. Among the participating delegates, nine of them were Borlaug LEAP alumni including me.

As part of his Borlaug LEAP Fellowship, James Mushi, a PhD student at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Tanzania under the Genomics to Improve Poultry Program, traveled to Iowa State University (ISU) in July 2017, to collaborate with ISU Genomics to Improve Poultry program partners on analyses for data generated through poultry trials conducted at SUA.

Perot Saelao from the Huaijun Zhou lab at UC Davis visited Dr. Boniface Kayang and the Ghana research team in order to help improve and troubleshoot the quantitation of the Newcastle disease virus through qPCR. On his arrival, Perot reviewed procedures done by the Ghana students and research team and was able to assist in the recovery of over 300 data points through reevaluation and troubleshooting. Despite the local holiday in Ghana, the team worked to establish working standards that were then validated on site and used to quantify the viral titer of 864 samples across two trials.