Two new PhD candidates from Kenya and the Philippines joined the MECOH lab

Ngure Kagia from Kenya and Irish Coleen Asin from the Philippines joined the MECOH laboratory as new PhD candidates.
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Ngure finished his MSc. in Bioinformatics at the University of Leicester- Leicester UK. He has previously worked in the wet and dry laboratory on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) projects in Kilifi, Kenya and Cambridge, UK.  Ngure has also worked on measles virus isolation in Nairobi, Kenya. His future interest in the MECOH laboratory revolve around the dynamics of antimicrobial resistant bacteria (ARB) in our environment.

From the Philippines is Coleen who has obtained her Master of Science degree in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of the Philippines Diliman. She has worked on various research projects, one of which was surveillance of mosquito viruses thru mosquito viral metagenomics at UP Diliman. She has also worked on SARS-CoV-2 whole genome sequencing as a member of the Philippine Genome Center’s COVID-19 biosurveillance team. Going forward, she intends to focus and continue her research on mosquitoes and insect-specific viruses in the MECOH laboratory.