Image credit: Wellcome Sanger Institute


To celebrate Black History Month 2023, we are highlighting some of the incredible Black women on campus.
These women, Martha Mulongo, Rachel Ogidan, and Alice Matimba, all have crucial roles in progressing the scientific research that takes place at the Wellcome Genome Campus.
This series was inspired by the Black Medical Scientific Network ‘Portraits of Black Female Scientist’ project, a collection of portraits celebrating the amazing work black female scientists are doing, spearheaded by Dr. Laura Eghobamien and lecturer James Bell.
There will be an event showcasing these portraits on Sat, 28 October, which will also include talks from some of those featured. More information on this event can be found on Eventbrite.
Martha Mulongo
Research Assistant, Blaxter Group, Tree of Life Programme
Martha maintains and inbreeds a diverse range of nematode species to provide material for high molecular weight DNA extraction. This enables the generation of long-read data which is used to assemble high-quality reference genomes across Nematoda.
These genomes enable the study of the evolution and diversity of nematodes, a key branch of the Tree of Life.

Martha Mulongo
Martha Mulongo
Martha Mulongo, Research Assistant, Blaxter Group, Tree of Life Programme
Martha maintains and inbreeds a diverse range of nematode species to provide material for high molecular weight DNA extraction. This enables the generation of long-read data which is used to assemble high-quality reference genomes across Nematoda.
These genomes enable the study of the evolution and diversity of nematodes, a key branch of the Tree of Life.
Alice Matimba
Head of Training and Capacity Building at Wellcome Connecting Science
Alice leads the computational- and laboratory-based courses and the global training programme.
Alice and her team develop and deliver genomics training to scientists and healthcare professionals from all over the world.

Alice Marimba
Alice Matimba
Alice Matimba, Head of Training and Capacity Building at Wellcome Connecting Science
Alice leads the computational- and laboratory-based courses and the global training programme.
Alice and her team develop and deliver genomics training to scientists and healthcare professionals from all over the world.
Rachel Ogidan
Compliance Manager for the Genomic Surveillance Unit at the Wellcome Sanger Institute
Rachel supports the team, whose priority is to continually increase benefits to public health while improving the accessibility and quality of genomic surveillance data.
She supports this goal by leading a small team committed to ethical and equitable access to global sample resources crucial for the generation of surveillance data.

Rachel Ogidan
Rachel Ogidan
Rachel Ogidan, Compliance Manager for the Genomic Surveillance Unit at the Wellcome Sanger Institute
Rachel supports the team, whose priority is to continually increase benefits to public health while improving the accessibility and quality of genomic surveillance data.
She supports this goal by leading a small team committed to ethical and equitable access to global sample resources crucial for the generation of surveillance data.