David Twesigomwe on the impact of the JXTX Foundation

The JXTX Foundation's first activity was to sponsor 10 graduate students to attend the 2020 Biological Data Science Conference at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Awards were competitive and we were delighted with our first round of participants.

David Twesigomwe, a scholarship awardee and a PhD candidate in Human Genetics at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg benefited greatly from his participation:

The JXTX Foundation Scholarship gave me the opportunity to attend the 2020 CSHL Biological Data Science Meeting (#biodata20 - virtual), a timely conference given my current PhD work involving building reproducible pipelines for calling star alleles in Cytochrome P450 genes. Even though the conference was virtual, I am really glad to have interacted with fellow young researchers from around the world, broadening my perspectives in the process. By far, my best part of #biodata20 was meeting one-on-one with four incredible genomics and data science researchers, courtesy of being a JXTX scholarship awardee. Although the mentorship sessions lasted only 30 minutes, I felt like I had been blessed with career and life-long mentors. All the mentors left the door open for further guidance, advice and perhaps even future collaboration. Having presented a poster at the conference, I have also benefitted from continued discussions about my research via the meeting slack workspace. Overall, the #biodata20 meeting is one of the best things that have happened to me in a challenging 2020. I would like to thank my supervisors, colleagues, JXTX mentors and above all the JXTX Foundation for making this experience possible.

Please help further the careers of junior researchers by considering make a contribution to JXTX: The James P. Taylor Foundation for Open Science.