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Hub Staff Etienne de Villiers, PhD
Hub Staff Etienne de Villiers, PhD Hub Staff
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Etienne de Villiers, PhD
 Bioinformatics Group Leader Unit: Bioinformatics Speciality Area: Bioinformatics Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Dr Etienne de Villiers is a Scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya; the ILRI-BecA Bioinformatics Group Leader and EMBNet Specialist Node Manager. He is a molecular biologist by training that developed an interest in computing and ventured into the area of bioinformatics. Dr de Villiers has an interest in the application of bioinformatics to develop vaccines and diagnostics for orphan diseases of both livestock and crops in Africa. He was part of the team that sequenced the first bacterial genome in Africa (Ehrlichia ruminantium) and was instrumental in establishing the bioinformatics group at ILRI to support the Theileria parva genome-sequencing project in collaboration with The Institute of Genomic Research (TIGR) to develop a vaccine against East Coast Fever. This project received the CGIAR’s Science Award for Outstanding Scientific Paper in 2006. Dr de Villiers believes that bioinformatics can play an important role in improving the health of livestock and crops in developing countries by taking full advantage of the mass of data being generated, and possibly shortening the route to vaccine and diagnostic development through the mining of existing data. To this end, he has a keen interest to train local scientists to be advanced users of bioinformatics and to develop the capability to solve problems locally. Dr de Villiers graduated from Stellenbosch University in South Africa with an M.Sc. in Biochemistry, and was appointed Researcher and later, Senior Researcher at the Agricultural Research Council – Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in South Africa in 1992. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Utrecht University, The Netherlands in 2001 and accepted a Postdoctoral Scientist position at ILRI in 2002 to establish a bioinformatics unit at ILRI. He is currently a Scientist at ILRI and the Bioinformatics Group Leader at the ILRI-BecA platform. Dr de Villiers is also an Extraordinary Lecturer at the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Unit, University of Pretoria, South Africa. |
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