Program Type
International
Organization Name
Botswana Harvard Health Partnership (BHP)
Internship Location
Gaborone, Botswana
Organization
The Botswana Harvard Health Partnership (BHP) is a research and training collaboration between the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Republic of Botswana. Founded in 1996 to combat HIV/AIDS, BHP conducts research, training, and capacity-building, expanding to address other public health challenges. Key focus areas include HIV-1 treatment and prevention in children and pregnant women, maternal and child health, cancer and STI diagnosis/treatment, and pathogen surveillance including HIV-1, HBV, HDV, HPV, SARS-CoV-2, and M.tb. BHP employs laboratory, clinical, and community-based research approaches and emphasizes training local investigators.
Position Overview
This internship offers laboratory or clinical research experience. The specific project will be chosen based on the intern’s background and interests and may involve bench science, clinical research, or epidemiologic research.
Lab Research Focus:
Techniques such as nucleic acid extraction, gene or near full-length genome amplification
Sanger and Next-Generation Sequencing (Oxford Nanopore, Illumina HiSeq/NextSeq)
Bioinformatic analysis including quality control, consensus sequence assembly, phylogenetics, drug resistance, and immune escape analysis
Pathogens studied may include HIV-1, HBV, HPV, M.tb, HDV, SARS-CoV-2, and potentially wastewater-derived pathogens
Clinical/Epidemiologic Research Focus:
Collaborate with clinical research teams on study materials, data collection, cleaning, and analysis
Exposure to analytic methods of causal inference and statistical data analysis
Optional clinical shadowing opportunities
Responsibilities
Produce a research report in manuscript format (background, methods, results, discussion, conclusion)
Give a scientific presentation at the end of the internship
Contribute to abstracts and manuscripts as co-author, if applicable
Participate in other research areas at BHP as opportunities arise
Qualifications
Rising juniors or seniors preferred
Lab-focused interns: prior wet lab research experience preferred
Clinical-focused interns: prior exposure to data analysis and statistical software preferred
Ability to travel and adapt to Botswana’s research and public health context
Learning Outcomes
Develop research proposal writing skills
Gain experience in scientific communication, including abstract/manuscript writing and oral presentations
Acquire laboratory or clinical research skills as relevant to chosen project
Build relationships and understand the public health landscape in Botswana
Internship Themes / Keywords
Bench Science/Wet Lab, Clinical Exposure, Data Analysis, Infectious Disease, Research
Training / Requirements
Depending on project, may require CITI training and/or Good Clinical Practice training
Additional training (e.g., data security) may be required
Work Environment
Fully in-person