Novartis initiated a Fellows program for African academic scientists in 2010, providing a 9 week-long industrial immersion experience at NIBR in Cambridge, MA in partnership with Seeding Labs. Through their scientific projects and activities, the Fellows learn new laboratory techniques and improve their scientific communication skills. The Fellows' time in the NIBR laboratories influences teaching and research activities when they return to their universities. As chemistry is an essential discipline in the drug discovery process, it has been a focus area for several visiting African Fellows and their NIBR scientific mentors. In particular, computational chemistry has minimal requirements and is ideally suited as an area for scientific capacity building in Africa. Additionally, extending chemistry capabilities in African laboratories to assist natural products research is of interest, particularly concerning malaria. An IAC Innovation grant, awarded in 2012 added momentum to this project, spurring our efforts in capturing a Canadian Grand Challenges award & funding from IUPAC. In early 2014, this initiative created its first job, a computational chemistry academic faculty position in Kenya.

Seed, foster, believe, dream and act: Capacity building in Kenya, Novartis' Global Discovery Chemistry, and IAC contributions 2010-2014

248th National Meeting (2014)

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