Scientific capacity grows when people come together to share what they know, learn from one another, and build something stronger. Sometimes, old friends coming together across oceans, united by a shared sense of purpose and a passion for science.

Last week, we welcomed Genay Pilarowski, Senior Scientist, and Juliana Gil, Scientist, from Biohub’s Rapid Response Team to CHRF. They spent the week with our Genomics Team, building on our existing RNA metagenomics work through hands-on training, troubleshooting, and finding ways to make our approaches even stronger.

But this story began eight years ago, when CHRF first travelled to Biohub for genomics training. It was the beginning of a partnership that helped us establish our sequencing capacity in Bangladesh, which became invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic, when we were able to provide more than 90,000 free COVID-19 diagnoses and sequence Bangladesh’s first SARS-CoV-2 genome.

Now, in 2026, the spirit behind that partnership remains the same: building scientific capacity that can thrive locally. Genay and Juliana embodied that throughout their visit, sharing their knowledge with our team, learning from our experiences, and visiting our surveillance site in Mirzapur to see the people, processes, and communities behind the data.

For their final talk, hosted by Building Scientists for Bangladesh, they surprised us by wearing Jamdani sharees they themselves chose and bought directly from weavers in Narayanganj.

This is what science can look like when we put our best foot forward and work together. Thank you to Biohub for a long-term collaboration rooted in the shared belief that lasting scientific capacity is essential for the future of science.