Computational Chemistry Takes Root In Kenya

Michael Juma Ouma, a master’s student in chemistry at Kenyatta University, in Nairobi, Kenya, remembers how he felt the first time he visualized a molecule in three dimensions, using just a few clicks of his computer mouse to rotate the molecule’s structure and get a feel for its stereochemistry.

“It was very exciting,” he says. “I was finally doing real chemistry.”

Access to computational chemistry tools is changing the way students like Ouma are learning chemistry in resource-poor countries like Kenya. Kenyatta University and the nearby University of Nairobi both recently established computational chemistry labs, which are the first of their kind in sub-Saharan East Africa.

“Before, we relied mainly on drawing pictures or structures on the whiteboard or getting printouts and having students take a look, but we missed out on the stereochemistry,” says Evans Changamu Ogwagwa, a chemistry professor at Kenyatta University who set up the computational chemistry lab there. “Now, you can turn the molecules on the screen, and you can see the excitement on the students’ faces.”

A few years ago, having access to computational chemistry tools in Kenya was just a dream, Ogwagwa says. That started to change in 2010 when he spent nine weeks as a visiting fellow at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, in Cambridge, Mass., where he worked in the lab of computational medicinal chemist Lewis Whitehead.

In addition to learning new computational chemistry techniques, Ogwagwa discussed experimental design with colleagues, and he improved his grant-writing and communication skills.

Ogwagwa wanted to build on his fellowship experience and the connections he had made with U.S. scientists, so when he returned to Kenyatta University he began working on creating a computational chemistry lab for teaching and research.

In 2012, Novartis donated 15 computational chemistry workstations to Kenyatta University, facilitated by the nonprofit organization Seeding Labs. In addition, the American Chemical Society Committee on International Activities awarded Ogwagwa a $5,000 ACS Global Innovation Grant, which went toward molecular modeling software, an Apple iPad, and secondhand chemistry textbooks.

Whitehead visited Kenyatta University and helped Ogwagwa get the lab set up. “They can now use the computers to demonstrate what the students are taught in their lectures,” he says.

Helping sub-Saharan Africa build its research infrastructure also helps the U.S. “If we want to improve health through drugs and vaccines that best fit the needs of African populations, then there’s an enormous need for fundamental science focused specifically on those patients,” says Brigitta Tadmor, vice president and global head for diversity and inclusion as well as health policy at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. “In the long term, nobody is better positioned to advance that knowledge than scientists like Ouma.”

With the new computational lab up and running, students are clamoring for time on the workstations, says Ouma, who notes that there is frequently a long wait to use the computers. Graduate students familiar with how to use the workstations train the undergraduates how to use them.

Whitehead says Novartis has begun exploring research collaborations with Kenyatta University and the University of Nairobi, where chemistry professor Solomon Derese is also setting up a new computational chemistry lab. That lab is equipped with computer workstations donated by Novartis and purchased with a $110,000 grant from Grand Challenges Canada. He says the lab will enable him to create a database of natural products from Kenyan plants to assist in the design of malaria drugs.

“One of the challenges of being in a resource-poor country is that our labs are not well equipped,” Derese says. “You can have ideas, but it’s very difficult to bring those ideas to fruition, so it’s just a dream sometimes.”

Both Derese and Ogwagwa hope that the additional research capabilities will help them secure more grants. “Before anybody gives you money, you have to say what capabilities you have, or what capabilities you have access to, and that was quite limiting,” Ogwagwa says. “But now that we have a computational chemistry facility, it opens up alternative ways of doing research, and with that we can now write grants and ask for money. It also becomes easier to collaborate with other people.”

“It’s a very, very exciting time,” Ogwagwa says. “We have new things to do now, and we can’t afford to be idle.”