Mamadou Sangare, a recent graduate of the ACE-Mali program, recently marked a significant milestone in his academic journey by successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis. His research included collaborative projects with two NIAID Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (BCBB) structural biologists, Phil Cruz and Sergio Hassan, which resulted in a peer-reviewed publication.
With his thesis work near completion, Mamadou accepted a coveted post-doctoral position with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Just two days after defending his thesis, he was in flight from Mali to Maryland to join an NIH project. This is historic for ACE: Mamadou is the first ACE graduate directly hired and onboarded by the NIH since the partnership began in 2015.
He will work at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) on computational structural biology research to support a new grant. Earlier this year, NIH principal investigators Hans Ackerman (NIAID) and Bill Eaton (NIDDK), along with collaborators and BCBB structural biologists Phil Cruz, Sergio Hassan, and Yong Sok Lee, won an NIH Director’s Challenge Innovation Award for the project “Discovering Inhibitors of Hemoglobin-S Polymerization in Silico & In Vitro,” which aims to use computational and lab methods to identify drugs that effectively treat sickle cell diseases.
Mamadou’s journey underscores the promising future that could await future graduates of ACE. To learn more about student research opportunities with the NIAID, visit https://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/postdoctoral-research-training.