Congratulations to MSc student Dr. Rokiatou Kone Berethe (MD), who was recently awarded an $8000 BMO Financial Group MSc Research Scholarship of Excellence. Dr. Berethe is supervised by Dr. Mohammed Moghadasian, Principal Investigator, Pathology Research Laboratory, Canadian Centre for Agri-Food Research in Health and Medicine (CCARM).
Dr. Berethe graduated from University of Bamako in Mali where she completed her medical degree in 2005. She also completed a one-year graduate program in the area of Functional foods and Nutraceuticals at the University of Laval in Quebec in 2015, and has also taken many English classes in the USA and in Canada. She joined St Boniface Hospital Albrechtsen Research Center in 2015 as a volunteer, then started the MSc program in 2016 at University of Manitoba under the supervision of Dr Mohammed Moghadasian. Her current research is about cardiovascular benefits of 5 dietary agents from her native Africa in LDL-r-KO mice in collaboration with 2 laboratories from Bostwana and Nigeria.
Berethe has secured positions in several institutions including the humanitarian non-profit Association femmes et SIDA au Mali, the Laboratory of Applied Molecular Biology at the University of Bamako, the Mali National Tuberculosis Program, the United Nations Population Fund- Ethiopia, and others. Currently, as a volunteer, she is the Chair of Food/Nutrition and Events Committee for the Immigrant Integration and Farming Co-op (IIFCC).
The BMO Financial Group MSc Research Scholarship of Excellence is a partnership made possible by a $250,000 gift from BMO Financial Group with a $250,000 matching grant from St. Boniface Hospital Foundation. The scholarship supports students employed at the I.H. Asper Clinical Research Institute or the MacLean Building at St-Boniface Hospital Research during their graduate studies.