Thomas Egwang

Thomas Egwang has become the first Ugandan scientist to be awarded a scholarship by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The new funding of $225,000–450,000 over five years dwarfs Egwang's previous grants from groups such as the World Health Organization. A further bonus is that the money is unrestricted. The funds can be used for supplies, travel to meetings, training graduate students and other needs.

Egwang's first port of call was Vancouver where all 132 international HHMI researchers from 29 countries met for the first time last month to discuss their research projects. Whereas HHMI has previously chosen scholarships based on geographical region—for example, last year's competition focused on scientists from the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe— Egwang's competition round was the first to be selected by disease area, in this case infectious and parasitic diseases.

As a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Medical Parasitology at the Medical Biotechnology Labs in Kampala, Egwang is conducting basic research on the biochemical drug targets in Onchocerca volvulus, the causative agent involved in river blindness, and Plasmodium falciparum with the aim of developing a new generation of antifilarial drugs based on protein prenylation. His team is also collaborating with the Ministry of Health to map antimalarial drug resistance in Uganda.