Donald Bajia

Donald Bajia completed his PhD training at Poznan University of Medical Sciences, where he worked on the "bioenergetic characterization of Noonan syndrome-germline mutations in disease development and target recognition through computational modeling and simulation." This work was realized in collaboration with the Lab of Pharmacology at the University of Verona. Bajia obtained his bachelor's degree in biochemistry at the University of Bamenda, Cameroon. He later went on to complete his master's degree in molecular and medical biotechnology at the University of Verona, Italy. During his master's program, he characterized the bioenergetics of murine brain organoids in vitro using the Seahorse platform setup. This study, coupled with his interest in mitochondrial function and energy metabolism in disease pathogenesis, served as inspiration and paved the way for him to pursue his PhD research. His PhD work involved both bench research and dry-lab, as he investigated the metabolic dysregulations in Ptpn11 variants of Noonan Syndrome and identified a potential small molecule with high affinity for SHP2, the protein encoded by the Ptpn11 gene, using in silico methods.