ABOVE: Left to right: FLAIR recipients Kanyiva Muindi, Lenine Liebenberg, and Leopold Tientcheu
AAS
Starting a research group is often not easy for early-career scientists in Africa. There are burdensome teaching loads and administrative duties, a shortage of research equipment, and insufficient funds to employ extra research staff. A new, £25 million program of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) based in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Royal Society in the UK funded by Global Challenges Research Fund seeks to change that.
On April 4, the Future Leaders - African Independent Research (FLAIR) program announced 30 inaugural recipients who will each get £300,000 (US $388,000) over the next two years.
“It’s not only money, but it’s also an investment into skills building and collaborations that I will get from this grant,” says one recipient, Lenine Liebenberg, an expert on mucosal immunology at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South ...
