Trainee Irene Owusu

Ms. Irene A. Owusu is a PhD student of the University of Ghana and a WACCBIP fellow under the WELCOME TRUST-DELTAS program. She is studying the interplay between norovirus infection and Akt signaling in the Wobus lab, University of Michigan as a Visiting Scholar.

She was born and raised in Agogo-Ashanti, a lovely little town in Ghana, West Africa. She moved to the city for college at the University of Ghana where she attained a Bachelor’s in Zoology and an MPhil in Microbiology.

After receiving her masters she didn’t have much research laboratory experience, except for conventional PCR, bacteria culture, and light microscopy but she was offered work as a research assistant with her mentor to gain experience. Coupled with a part-time job as a teaching assistant for a virology class, she developed an interest in academia and therefore applied and was accepted into the WACCBIP fellowship as a PhD student in August 2017.

The WACCBIP fellowship affords students the opportunity to visit other institutions for experiential learning in research. Consequently, her PhD supervisor, Dr. Osbourne Quaye and she discussed the possibility of having experiential learning outside Ghana, so he contacted Dr. Alice Telesnitsky who gladly put them in contact with Dr. Christiane Wobus. Christiane at the time had space in her lab to train a student so she was happy to accommodate after a couple of interactions. Funds from MIDIS, WACCBIP and the Wobus lab were pooled to sponsor her two-year stay as a visiting scholar in the Wobus lab, University of Michigan.

She followed due process and by November 2018, she was in the cold of Ann Arbor, her first time in such freezing temperatures! The temperature might be cold but the people she met were nothing but warm. She had never worked with cells nor viruses, but here she is in the cell-culture-driven Wobus lab! She was more excited than frightened, and couldn’t wait to learn.

At the beginning of 2019, she was trusted to run experiments independently and follow through her research plan. Now she is confident with techniques in the Wobus lab and will definitely leave Michigan a better scientist than before. She appreciates the existence of the MIDIS fund for making it possible to stay longer and experience science in diverse respects here at the University of Michigan.