This is a competitive renewal application from the University of Maryland and the University of Bamako, Mali for continued support for the FIC training program, Malaria Research Training in Mali. The overall goal of the program is to build sustainable research capacity at the Malaria Research and Training Center (MRTC) at the University of Bamako, Mali. This will be accomplished by continuing to provide training in malaria research to junior scientists at the MRTC, filling identified gaps in expertise and capacity at the MRTC, and strengthening the sustainability of malaria research in Mali by developing the ability of MRTC scientists to compete for research funding. The ultimate result of this training will be to benefit the public health of Mali. The University of Maryland and the University of Bamako have worked in close partnership for ten years on studies of malaria drug resistance, pathogenesis, immunity, epidemiology, genetics and clinical trials of vaccines and drugs. This successful research partnership has helped create a rich environment for training Malian malaria researchers for the last five years. The Malaria Training Grant has provided opportunities for dozens of MRTC scientists, including short-term training in the U.S. and Mali, and long-term degree training based in at the University of Bamako. We propose to maintain and extend this successful training program, adding a bioinformatics component emphasizing applied genomics research. Research training will emphasize priority research areas including clinical trials of malaria vaccines and combination drug therapies and malaria in pregnancy. To meet the needs of the MRTC to develop in-house expertise in bioinformatics, including the ability to manage and analyze genomic scale datasets, one MRTC researcher will undertake PhD training in bioinformatics at the University of Pennsylvania Genomics Institute.
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