Marta joined CARTA in October 2018 as one of the two program managers. She leads the training and fellowship component of the Consortium and the implementation of the new strategic objective of creating research hubs at partner institutions. She also oversees the support, training and progress of 227 active fellows, 131 of which have graduated and moved on to take postdoctoral awards and research grants, within and outside of the Consortium. Marta is a developmental biologist by training, dedicated to building research capacity in Africa. She has over ten (10) years of considerable experience in research capacity strengthening at a number of African universities and research centers and 12 years of experience studying the impact of gene expression regulation at mRNA level on early animal development and human disease. She holds a PhD, MSc and a BSc in Biological Sciences. She has also undertaken a postdoc in Cambridge, UK and another one in UCSD, USA, before moving to East Africa. Marta has worked in research and higher education institutions in Spain, UK, USA, Uganda and Kenya. Her goal is to continue supporting research capacity strengthening in African institutions and programs that facilitate research training for African scholars who want to remain in the continent to work on locally relevant research questions.