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WOMEN AND SCIENCE: BACKANOT Sarah Colombe, scholarship holder at the University of TÜBINGEN in Germany.


Ms Sarah Colombe BACKANOT, was born on 5 November 1997 in Mokengui in the Likouala department, one of six children. Colombe is the second daughter and the fourth child. She is very close to her parents who brought her up with respect and love for others, she says with a peaceful smile. Her main hobby is listening to GOSPEL music. In preparation for her upcoming trip to Germany, Colombe is actively learning English at a language club in Brazzaville. "I feel privileged to have been selected for this very competitive scholarship and I have all the energy to give it my best shot," she says.


SCHOOL AND ACADEMIC CAREER

After her baccalaureate series C at the Thomas Sankara high school in Brazzaville in 2014, she intended to continue her studies in aviation, although admitted to the test, she was not selected. Far from being discouraged from fulfilling her first dream, her love for science led her to enrol at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the Marien Ngouabi University where she studied biology and obtained her bachelor's degree in cellular and molecular biology in 2019 and a master's degree in biochemistry and applied microbiology in 2021.


WOMEN AND SCIENCE GRANTS

In April 2021, along with several other female students from the Faculty of Science and Technology of the Marien Ngouabi University, she responded to the call for applications for the "Women and Science" grants from the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research. She was one of the two laureates for the Master 2 level. Determined to be a true Woman of Science, Sarah Colombe applied a few weeks later for a PhD scholarship from the University of Tübingen in the framework of capacity building in the South. Her application was positively evaluated.

As part of her PhD thesis at the Institute of Tropical Medicine of the University of Tübingen in Germany, Sarah Colombe will work on the molecular epidemiology of tropical diseases.