A group of four Sussex colleagues have recently returned from running a brand new Computational Neuroscience summer course in Damaturu in rural northeastern Nigeria. The course was held at the BioRTC (Biomedical Science Research and Training Centre), a unique biomedical research centre in northeastern Nigeria founded by a Sussex Life Sciences alumnus, Mahmoud Bukar Maina. The course was designed to build capacity in Nigeria in data sciences allied to neuroscience, and was co-created with Albert Compte, a collaborator in Barcelona.

BioRTC received crucial initial support from Sussex, including equipment donations and teaching visits by colleagues in Life Sciences and Sussex Neuroscience. This year the centre secured a major Wellcome award for a research project on dementia and public health – the award is unprecedented in scale and serves to triple the entire Wellcome investment in Nigeria. Sussex will be a key partner, set to receive over £600k in direct funding.

The Computational Neuroscience course is underwritten by a competitive grant from a US foundation. The course had over 300 applicants with participants joining from across Nigeria and wider West Africa. It was taught as an international partnership, with instructors including PhD students in the Sussex Neuroscience and Sussex AI programmes already experienced in teaching AI in Africa. The course ran for two weeks in July, and almost 40% of participants were women, very high for this region and for a computational discipline. The funding will enable us to run several editions, and we are already looking forward to returning to BioRTC.

Coinciding with the course, Mahmoud was knighted for services to science and knowledge by the local traditional leader, the Emir of Damaturu. We were impressed by both traditional and political leaders’ support for Mahmoud’s efforts in biomedical science and healthcare. As part of the knighthood’s coverage, we were filmed and interviewed for Nigerian outlets.

If you would like to read the full report on the new course, please email: M.Maravall@sussex.ac.uk.