Our Blog

Happy new year 2023! We definitely had a fantastic 2022, rolling out a new program, the BHKi bioinformatics campus outreaches.  The goal of the outreaches stems from BHKi’s primary objective, which is to close the knowledge gap between early-career researchers and bioinformatics experts. In this regard, we aim to sensitize and educate undergraduates about bioinformatics and open science. Our target is universities offering life science and computer science courses at the undergraduate level and the …

Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya Initiative Seminar Series The BHKi seminar series was a hybrid event that happened on July 19 and 20. After two years of online conferences and learning, we were glad to hold this two-day seminar physically. This was the second physical event BHKi held since our launch in 2019. Around the globe, researchers and students are big on physical meetings because they get to not only share knowledge but also commune over …

A look into reproducibility. Following a successful sensitization and introduction to concepts and tools used in Bioinformatics and Open science, we provided selected participants with projects to put into practice the skills they had learned. The Bioinformatics and Open Science Skills (BOSS) mini-project was a three-week event that gave the trainees a platform to collaborate by working and practising their skills. The main mini-projects were as follows: Open science in Africa Plant genome Analysis Viral …

Bioinformatics is recognized as part of the essential knowledge base of numerous career paths in biomedical research and healthcare. There has been rapid development of high-throughput technologies, data storage capacity, and sophisticated algorithms, which have brought about immense changes in the research practices in biological research fields. Computational and quantitative skills, such as those taught in bioinformatics curricula, are helpful for scientists to take advantage of the availability of this data. A study on core …

We’ve told you of the journey up to the funding, which was the beginning of the story. Having obtained the funds, we began the work. How do you best empower and impart Bioinformatics and Open science skills in researchers? We already had a road map, sensitize – train – hack – collaborate – community, so we had to put it in action. And the #BOSSEvents was activated. In the Sensitize phase, we held the Open …

Writing a grant application is not a walk in the park. However, when you are a non-profit organization (NGO), you rely on grants to continue meeting your goals. The bioinformatics hub of Kenya (BHKi) is the brainchild of five young and vibrant bioinformaticians. As an NGO, our main goal is to use our talents, education, and experience to raise up a generation of globally competitive bioinformaticians from Kenya and Africa as a whole, for the …

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” That’s what we can say about our first R workshop, which was also our first workshop as BHKi. We gathered the knowledge and experience we all had as a committee and put it together to deliver the two-day workshop. It happened on the 24th and 25th of March 2021. And it was such a journey. So let us take you through it. The …

On the sunny day that was 14th of August 2019, three brilliant and visionary young masters’ students came up with the idea to start a hub. Their goal was to bridge the seemingly large and widening gap between aspiring and established bioinformaticians in Kenya. The seed had been planted, and the tree that would eventually spring out would be called the Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya (BHK). A structural and organizational framework was designed. A few …