Year 2026
Episode 13
Tendai Muronzi – “My two-month exchange at the University of Bern has helped me to attain outputs that I have taken back to South Africa and also an insight into what it means to do research outside Africa.”
Recording date: 17.09.2025
Moderator: Djouroukoro Diallo. Production: Patricia Teixidor. Music: Intro and outro: "Yadina" (xylophone duet). CD 1. MBUDI MBUDI NA MHANGA-NYMBO ZA WADODO. The Musical Universe of the Wagogo Children from Tanzania ©PoloVallejo. Musical pauses: Portland Kora Project-May 2017. Free Music Archive, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Originating from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Tendai is a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Unit in Bioinformatics at Rhodes University, South Africa, which is part of the ARUA-The Guild Clusters of Research Excellence (CoRE). She holds a PhD in Bioinformatics and specialises in drug discovery and protein–protein interactions, with a focus on elucidating mechanisms of pathogenicity and identifying therapeutic targets for malaria, rare diseases, and neglected tropical diseases. Her research is grounded in structural bioinformatics, encompassing mutational analysis, homology modelling, protein network analysis, and molecular dynamics simulations, with an interest in membrane protein systems.
In 2025, she undertook a two-month research exchange facilitated by the CoRE Genomics for Health in Africa (GHA) at the University of Bern, Institute of Cell Biology, under Prof. Dr Carmen Faso, where she received hands-on training in protein purification for malarial drug discovery. During her visit, she shared insights into her research work and reflected on her scientific experience in Bern. She regards this exchange as a fruitful and formative step in her career and remains strongly committed to continuous learning, viewing scientific development as a lifelong process.