The Centre for Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Career Development Group

CEBIB CDG Members 

Dr Isabella Ochola-Oyier, Dr Benard Kulohoma, Dr Harold Ocholla, Mr Abraham Parwos

The Centre for Biotechnology and Bioinformatics

The Centre for Biotechnology and Bioinformatics (CEBIB), located at the College of Biological and Physical Sciences, of the University of Nairobi was founded in 2005 as a virtual centre for Research and Postgraduate Training at MSc and PhD levels in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics. The Centre aims to increase capacity and develop manpower for health; agriculture; industry, environmental management and related fields. The Centre has so far trained over 59 postgraduate students. The Centre also offers short courses for both local and international participants.

Mentorship and Supervision

The CEBIB Career Development Group through the collaboration of Malaria Capacity Development Consortium (MCDC) started implementing its activities in CEBIB (affiliated to MCDC) in March 2014, with the aim of strengthening postgraduate learning and research. The long-term goal is to embed the career development programs: personal development planning (PDP), mentoring and good supervisory practices into our postgraduate training.

CDG Achievements 

• We recently appointed a postgraduate research co-ordinator to enable us to achieve our aims and support the CDG team by engaging in streamlining postgraduate management processes at CEBIB.
• We have introduced the PDP, mentoring and new supervision strategies to the CEBIB MSc students.
• We have held successful strategy and team building meetings to share the aims of the CDG with CEBIB members of staff.
• A major activity is the redesign of the CEBIB facility to create a conducive, teaching and research environment for our students. We ran an interior design competition in the Schools of Art & Design and Architecture to develop a plan to create a redesigned CEBIB facility.
• We have developed guidelines for writing MSc. proposals and theses, PDP, mentoring and we have created a list of CEBIB supervisors and mentors.
• We are in the process of developing structures for postgraduate support systems. We are now moving towards an online documenting system for the postgraduate supervision process that will facilitate the monitoring and evaluation of student progress.
• The CEBIB CDG is grateful for the support, since inception and in the activities it has conducted, from the University of Nairobi management; with much acknowledgment to CEBIB director, the College Principal and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor-Research Production and Extension (DVC-RPE).

For more information, contact:

Dr Isabella Ochola-Oyier: isseyochola [at] gmail [dot] com