Capacity Building Programs
Beyond the lab's own R25 program, Dr. Davis co-leads and collaborates on two hands-on structural biology training programs run by partner organizations — SBGrid's CryoEM Train-the-Trainer program and BioStruct-Africa's capacity-building workshops.
SBGrid CryoEM Train-the-Trainer Program
An NIH R25–funded program that equips faculty to bring hands-on cryo-EM training back to their home institutions.
CryoEM Train-the-Trainer
SBGrid leads a CryoEM Train-the-Trainer program funded through an NIH R25 award to Piotr Sliz (Harvard Medical School) and Jamaine Davis (co-PI), titled "Continuing Education for Structural Biology Mentors." The program equips faculty with the knowledge and resources to deliver hands-on cryo-EM training at their own institutions, removing the technical barriers that keep cryo-EM out of reach for smaller labs and teaching-focused programs.
Format
SBCloud
All workshops run in SBGrid's AWS cryo-EM cloud environment — a uniform, ready-to-run platform for data processing and analysis.
Reach
12 workshops
Hosted since the R25 award began, with faculty participants from 55 institutions across the United States.
What's next
Cryo-ET curriculum
A new curriculum in cryo-electron tomography is in preparation, with first workshops launching in late 2025.
Ongoing support
Monthly office hours
Meharry/SBGrid Train-the-Trainer Office Hours, open to alumni and future attendees, held monthly on Thursdays.
What it removes
- ✓ Technical setup barriers — SBCloud ships a working compute environment, so faculty focus on the science, not IT.
- ✓ Access barriers — designed for institutions without in-house cryo-EM facilities or compute clusters.
Who leads it
- ✓ Piotr Sliz, Harvard Medical School — PI
- ✓ Jamaine Davis — Co-PI
BioStruct-Africa Workshops
A grassroots capacity-building program bringing hands-on structural biology and AI-assisted training to Africa-based scientists.
Hands-on Training in Structural Biology
BioStruct-Africa is a grassroots non-governmental organization, co-founded and led by Dr. Emmanuel Nji, that builds capacity for Africa-based researchers in structural biology. Its workshops pair theoretical lectures with hands-on training in X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM, AlphaFold structure prediction, and computational drug design, followed by post-workshop online mentoring and a "train-the-trainer" model so graduates return as facilitators in later cohorts. Dr. Davis is a collaborator and co-author on the program's published outcomes research.
Track record
Ghana → Nairobi
Workshops held in Ghana (2019), Mali (2022), Douala, Cameroon (2024), and Nairobi, Kenya (2025).
2025 flagship (Series 6)
101 trainees
From 18 African countries, selected from 198 applications — held at ILRI, Nairobi, August 2025.
Representation
40% women
All eligible women applicants were selected for the Nairobi cohort.
10-year vision
~1,000 scientists
Goal of training 100 Africa-based structural biologists per year through this scalable framework.
Curriculum
- ✓ X-ray crystallography & cryo-EM fundamentals
- ✓ AlphaFold structure prediction & interpretation
- ✓ Computational drug design (Schrödinger platform)
- ✓ Protein visualization & analysis in PyMOL
Measured outcomes
- ✓ Average satisfaction score of 4.47/5 across the Nairobi 2025 cohort
- ✓ Post-training assessments showed 10%+ score improvements
- ✓ 92.75% of participants would recommend the workshop to colleagues