For several years now the University of Bremen has been cooperating with the Nigerian Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria on research into tropical diseases and the development of new vaccines. The joint research project is run by Humboldt prizewinner, Prof. Jonathan Andrew Nok and the Bremen Professor Soerge Kelm from the Faculty of Biology/Chemistry. The two scientists have built up a research network that spreads all over Nigeria and Cameroon and they are continually kept busy training young researchers in the region. This cooperation has now borne “excellent” fruit: Professor Nok’s institute recently became one of the seven research establishments in Nigeria permitted to call itself an “African Centre of Excellence” (ACE). Over the next three years the “ACE for Neglected Tropical Diseases” will receive four million dollars from the World Bank. The Bank launched this funding initiative to provide a boost to research made-in-Africa. So far a total of fifteen universities have been awarded the title – seven of which are located in Nigeria.
“Our success is thanks to the cooperation with the University of Bremen”
“We are of course thrilled about the new funding”, says Professor Jonathan Andrew Nok. “It is in no small part due to the good cooperation with the excellent university of Bremen that our application was successful”: Because a cooperation arrangement with an internationally renowned research university is number one prerequisite for being able to submit a research proposal – as, in turn, active cooperation with another university in Africa.
Nok and his Nigerian colleagues will spend the four million dollars mainly on improvements to technical equipment and infrastructure. In particular, they intend to build up two central service units to advance research on neglected diseases in the region itself. Moreover, they want to set up a biobank and a central laboratory for innovative research into new vaccines.
You can read the more detailed press release in German here.
You can obtain further information by contacting:
University of Bremen
Faculty of Biology/Chemistry (FB 02)
Prof. Dr. Soerge Kelm
Phone: +49-421-218 63222
email: skelm@uni-bremen.de
Prof. Dr. Jonathan Nok
Phone: +49-421-218 63220
email: nok@uni-bremen.de
