Dr. Nkemngo Francis attended the prestigious 7-weeks intensive Biology of Parasitism (BOP 2023) course at the Marine Biology Lab, Woods Hole, MA, USA. The course provided a unique opportunity for novel hands-on skilling (wet-lab experiments and bioinformatic mining) of modern techniques applicable to the study of fundamental parasite biology such as parasite culture, functional genetics, imaging, fluorescence microscopy, experimental infection, protein expression, flow-cytometry and cytokine assays. In particularly, the course is designed such that students work together in small groups in an advanced laboratory setting, gaining hands-on experience and working collaboratively with the faculty to explore new questions and discover new knowledge. The course also enlightened an atmosphere of critical thinking through daily lectures and interactive discussion with established scientists including Freddy Frischknecht, Vern Carruthers, Omar Harb, Silvia Portugal, Kirk Deitsch, Stephanie Blandin, Jim Collins, Alvaro Acosta, Emma Wilson, Pedro Gazzinelli etc.
