Dr Rosienne Farrugia, a senior lecturer at the Department of Applied Biomedical Science, has been awarded the H2020 Twinning Grant worth close to €1M. The grant was given for the co-ordination and support action for training in emerging research areas through partnering of the University of Malta with the University of Cambridge and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

Entitled 'Interdisciplinary Training in High-Throughput Sequencing, Bioinformatics and Model Systems: Moving towards Clinical applications of Genomics' (TrainMalta), this three-year project will be co-ordinated by Dr Rosienne Farrugia, Dr Stephanie Bezzina Wettinger and Professor Angela Xuereb. The project will bring together scientists from the fields of genetics, molecular biology, IT, computer science and bioinformatics from the University of Malta, the University of Cambridge and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

The project will expedite capacity building in Malta through training in bioinformatics for the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data, epigenetic studies and the use of induced human pluripotent stem cells and zebrafish model systems for the functional study of candidate disease genes.