FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, partnered with us by providing a grant titled, 'Building Capacity Genomic Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens in resource-constrained settings'. Through this grant, we were able to provide scholarships to trainees and build infrastructure by establishing a genomics lab in the University of Chittagong to decentralise research.
CHRF received its first corporate social responsibility (CSR) funding from Illumina as a grant titled, 'Building the Next Generation of Scientists'. Through this grant, we set up science camps and provided scholarships for our hands-on next-generation sequencing training program.
The International Vaccine Institute and Robert Koch Institut supported us with a grant titled, 'Bringing science to people involved in the RIB project: Sparking interest at a young age for local infectious disease and epidemiological capacity building in Bangladesh'. This helped us set up science camps and bring students from rural areas to conduct training programs at CHRF.
With support from our friends at FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, Geneva, we set up a fully-fledged next-generation sequencing training lab in University of Chittagong. The lab is called, 'Next-Generation sequencing, Research and Innovation lab, CU (NRICh)'. Lab members also received sequencing training at CHRF and are running their iSeq100 regularly now!
In addition to training programs, we are also developing infrastructure for research. We recently inaugurated a dedicated next-generation sequencing training lab at our headquarters in Dhaka. This was made possible thanks to support from our friends in Illumina.
