The Center for Global Health Equity partners with The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College to fund undergraduate global health internships administered by the Global Health and Development Initiative.
From Dartmouth to Nairobi: The Center for Global Health Equity Helps Foster Doctoral & Undergraduate Research Opportunities Abroad
By Camilo Castelblanco-Riveros ’27 and Patrick Bongo ’27
Last summer, a small team of Dartmouth students travelled to Nairobi for a four-week internship at the Brain and Mind Institute (BMI) at Aga Khan University. Supported by Dartmouth’s Centre for Global Health Equity and the John Sloan Dickey Centre for International Understanding, the visit finished in a practical, hands-on workshop led by professors Thomas Thesen and Karen Blackmon, with local leadership from Dr. Bernard Alaka and Dartmouth students Camilo Castelblanco-Riveros ’27, Neuroscience Ph.D. and Computer Science and Economics undergraduate Patrick Bongo ’27.
Addressing a Critical Gap in Global Brain Health Research
Neurological conditions and accelerated age-related cognitive decline are growing concerns across Africa, yet local research is limited. BMI is changing that through initiatives like the Brain Resilience Kenya Study, which is enrolling 400 participants to explore social, psychological, and physical factors that differentiate healthy from accelerated ageing in local communities. The Dartmouth team arrived as BMI prepared to host the first “Neuroimaging and Wearable Sensors Research Workshop”—an initiative aimed at enhancing local technical skills and research independence.
The Workshop: Practical Tools for Local Researchers
Held July 2–3, 2025, the workshop combined short lectures with extensive hands-on sessions on MRI analysis, wearable sensors, and AI tools for brain health research. Designed and led by Drs. Thesen and Blackmon from the Geisel School of Medicine, the curriculum centred on a simple principle: African researchers should lead research about African populations. Training focused on practical skills that folks can implement immediately—processing neuroimaging data, collecting wearable sensor data to track sleep, activity, and vitality, and integrating these measures to answer pressing research questions.
Participants learned to use MRI software for structural analysis and to correlate imaging findings with behavioural and physiological data from wearable devices. The workshop ended with an interdisciplinary “hackathon” in which teams worked directly with a sample from the Brain Resilience Kenya dataset. That exercise produced more than three new project ideas—investigations ranging from links between intrinsic capacity and brain features to incidental MRI findings and connections between memory-related brain regions and cognitive scores.
Individual Contributions
The Dartmouth team worked closely with Dr. Thesen and Dr. Blackmon throughout the month to support both the workshop and ongoing research projects. The team included PhD candidate Camilo Castelblanco-Riveros, master’s student Anaum Showkat, medical student Mia Jimenez, and undergraduate Patrick Bongo. Each team member brought different skills to help with the hands-on components of the training. Below, two team members share what they contributed and learned from this experience.
Camilo
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African proverb
The geographic imbalance in neuroimaging data is a significant issue, as much of the existing research on brain development and ageing primarily involves participants from the Global North (e.g., the US, Canada, and Europe). To better understand the brain across diverse human populations, research must become more equitable and inclusive. For this purpose, I proposed and co-led the BMI workshop with Dr. Thesen and Dr. Blackmon to build local capacity and foster new collaborations in Kenya.
During my time at BMI, I had the opportunity to engage with a diverse group of researchers and clinicians. Our discussions covered a range of topics central to brain health, including white matter angiopathies (changes in blood vessels that can impact brain function), intrinsic capacity (an individual’s physical and mental abilities), and heart rate variability (a marker of autonomic nervous system health). Their expertise and insights were deeply inspiring.
My role was to help establish tools and infrastructures to support researchers in Kenya in exploring essential questions about resilience, health, and vitality. Practically, I developed a data-processing pipeline to analyze T1-weighted MRI brain images. At the workshop I helped create, I guided participants on using this pipeline. During the subsequent hackathon and the following days, I collaborated with researchers as they implemented these approaches to questions meaningful to their work. For instance, investigating the relationship between white matter angiopathies and cognitive function. So far, we have successfully processed over 300 brain images together.
This work is just the beginning of a shared journey toward more inclusive and impactful brain research that reflects the rich diversity of our global community.
Beyond research, I had the privilege of visiting picturesque and captivating parts of Kenya, including the Karura Forest – a sanctuary from the pace and pressures of city life – and the Maasai Mara National Reserve – a savanna renowned for its resident and migratory wildlife, including the “big 5” animals.
Patrick: Speech Biomarkers, AI, and Equity in Brain Health
As a Computer Science and Economics student at Dartmouth, and a Kenyan, I was grateful for the opportunity to return home and contribute to brain health research at the Brain and Mind Institute. I focused on developing speech biomarkers for early detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in multilingual, low-resource contexts. Working with Dr. Karen Blackmon and Postdoctoral Fellow Bernard Alaka, I helped build a dataset and supported a machine learning model to extract linguistic features from voice recordings. This work is especially important in Kenya, where traditional diagnostic tools often overlook linguistic diversity.
Beyond the lab, I joined the BMI team in the field to collect audio data and hear directly from everyday Kenyans about their views on dementia. These conversations were deeply grounding and reminded me that for science to be impactful, it must reflect the lived experiences of the communities it serves. Participating in this kind of localized research not only deepened my appreciation for cultural context but also highlighted the importance of building diagnostic tools that are both linguistically inclusive and socially relevant.
A standout moment of the internship was the Neuroimaging and Wearable Sensors Workshop. I had the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with local researchers while being introduced to tools such as Freesurfer and large language models (LLMs) for statistical analysis. The workshop demonstrated to me the power of combining neuroimaging, wearable data, and AI in ways that can be directly translated into real-world applications.
It culminated in a hackathon, where I served as group lead. We designed a comparative research study to explore how structural and functional brain features, such as hippocampal volume and connectivity within the default mode network, differ between individuals with and without self-reported memory decline. I helped shape the research framework, refine the question, and present our proposal to faculty and peers.
What made the experience especially memorable was the dynamic collaboration within our team. Each member brought unique expertise, ranging from neuroimaging to statistics to clinical perspectives, and I worked to synthesize these ideas into a cohesive research plan. As the youngest member of the group, I was honoured to be entrusted with presenting our collective work. The experience pushed me beyond my comfort zone and affirmed the value of diverse voices, shared leadership, and cross-cultural scientific collaboration.
This internship has reshaped how I think about the relationship between technology, equity, and global health. It was one thing to learn about machine learning and speech processing at Dartmouth, but seeing those same tools begin to serve real diagnostic needs in multilingual communities in Kenya made the work come alive in a completely new way. I saw firsthand how innovations developed in high-resource settings can be thoughtfully adapted to meet local realities, and how institutions like AKU are driving that transformation. It showed me that innovation must be inclusive and that equity is not a side benefit but a guiding principle. While there is still much work to be done, this experience affirmed that even small contributions can move us closer to a more equitable and collaborative future in global health.
Looking Forward: Building Lasting Partnerships
The month in Nairobi demonstrated what thoughtful international collaboration can accomplish: practical training, strengthened research infrastructure, and relationships that set the stage for locally led science. Rather than “extracting data,” this internship focused on equipping BMI researchers with tools and workflows that they can sustain and adapt to local needs.
Several collaborative projects that emerged from the workshop are moving forward, and Dartmouth and BMI teams plan follow-up activities to support data analysis, publication, and training. These steps aim to ensure that the researchers in Kenya—not external partners—define the most pressing questions and methods for studying brain health in their communities.
This internship was made possible by the generous support of Dartmouth’s Centre for Global Health Equity and the John Sloan Dickey Centre for International Understanding.