Profiles of Women in Science: Rachael Dangarembizi, Associate Professor at the Neuroscience Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa

The European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN) is pleased to introduce Professor Rachael Dangarembizi,1 whom we are featuring as part of our series Profiles of Women in Science. We initiated this series to raise the visibility and recognition of women scientists in our community (Helmreich et al. 2017). You can find all of the previous profiles here. The series aligns with other EJN activities to promote diversity in academia (see Helmreich et al. 2021; Willis et al. 2023) and is supported by the Alba Network. Rachael Dangarembizi (Figure 1) has conducted important research on neuroinfectious diseases caused by bacteria, parasites, and fungi. Five years ago, she established the CryptoLab at the University of Cape Town, which particularly focuses on the neurobiology of cryptococcal meningitis, a devastating fungal neuroinfection to which up to 70% of patients succumb. Her research integrates multiple experimental approaches, combining preclinical models with patient-derived material and cutting-edge techniques to interrogate disease mechanisms. In 2022, she was awarded a UK Research Duvenage et al. 2025; Dangarembizi et al. 2025). At a relatively early career stage, Rachael Dangarembizi has already taken up many international leadership roles, for example, as a board member of the Alba Network and of the IBRO Africa Regional Committee. In addition, for over 3 years, she has been the President of the Southern African Neuroscience Society (SANS), representing neuroscientists across 16 countries in the Southern African region. More information about Professor Dangarembizi's work can be found here. Not at all. Such a future wasn't on my horizon when I grew up, even though I think I have been a scientist at heart for all of my life, always wanting to know how things work; inquisitive. I grew up in a township in postcolonial Zimbabwe. My parents were immigrants from Mozambique, and because the two countries had different colonial histories, it was hard for them to navigate the school and formal employment system in Zimbabwe. But that did not affect their motivation; they had a strong conviction in the transformative power of education. I was the firstborn in a family of five. We lived in very humble settings, very different from those of most of my fellow scientists and probably unimaginable for some. It is under these circumstances that my scientific journey began, in makeshift classrooms, sheltered under trees, with very little desk time. I was academically gifted, always at the top of my class, and my mother worked very hard to get me into a good high school, though it was financially difficult. Neither of my parents was formally employed, although both were hardworking. The whole country was struggling, and bursaries were not available. It was also the middle of the HIV pandemic in Africa, and many people were dying, including in my own family. I lost both my parents because of the pandemic at the age of 16, and thereafter, life was never the same. When it happened, my educational plans were threatened because there were no resources for further education. So I took temporary jobs to support myself and my younger siblings. Eventually, I did enter the university to study Applied Biology and Biochemistry, entirely self-funded through side jobs. Of course, I kept trying to find whatever support was available. In those days, companies selected bright students and offered to pay for their education, hoping to recruit them once they had passed their exams. I was lucky, too, and was drafted by a dairy manufacturing company. As it turned out, the company never paid the university! Eventually, the university officers sent me a huge bill just before I wrote my final exams. Still, I was able to finish with a lot of help from others, and I graduated with very good grades. Before joining academia, I worked in industry first, as a trainee brewer at the largest beverage manufacturing company in Zimbabwe, with on-the-job training. It was a dream job, something others envied. And yet I left after 1.5 years. It so happened that the University from which I had graduated had decided to start a Medical Faculty. The problem was that they had virtually no staff. So they selected the best of their former students to first be trained abroad and then return to serve as staff members in the newly founded faculty. I was one of the former students they approached. From a list of possible subjects, I selected Physiology as a future field of study. There were plenty of chances to go abroad, for instance, to the United Kingdom. For personal reasons, I selected the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg because it was relatively close to home. Maybe not the best reason, but at the time, it was the right choice for me. And it turned out to be one of South Africa's best universities, which I had not been aware of before I went there. Through this staff development fellowship, one would receive a 2-year stipend to complete a Master's program, then return and be bonded to the home University for double that time. There was optional funding for an extra year if one did not succeed in the first 2 years. As it happened, I completed my Master's degree after only 8 months, and with the help of the (then) Dean in my Faculty, I was motivated to use the remaining funding, including the extra year, to enroll in a PhD project they had offered me. That is how I joined the PhD program at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I did a project focusing on immune-to-brain communication during infection. At the same time, as part of my agreement with my home University, I traveled to Zimbabwe each year to fulfill my teaching obligations at the Medical Faculty there. So ending up in neuroscience wasn't really planned, though I loved the subject from the start. Mostly, it was serendipitous. I'm a religious person, and so I would say it may have been destiny … Serendipity is a recurring theme in my career. Absolutely, I returned right after I earned my PhD. The agreement was that one had to work there for twice as many years as the Zimbabwean administration had supported me abroad, which, in my case, would have been 10 years. Or else, you had to pay back all the money they had invested in your education. A fair deal. I went back to Zimbabwe and even bought a house, determined to settle there. Yet it was difficult, especially after the 2017 coup and the impact of the shifting political landscape on the economy. During my PhD years, I had become accustomed to the relatively advanced infrastructure at the University of the Witwatersrand and the clockwork organization of the University of Giessen in Germany, where I also spent time as part of my PhD training. I had been exposed to the power of well-resourced, highly productive science, which was unavailable in Zimbabwe at the time, and understandably so, considering the resource constraints. I felt distressed and frustrated that I could not use the skills and knowledge I had acquired during my doctoral training. And then destiny struck again in a most bizarre way! On the 1st of December 2019, World AIDS Day, the (then) Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town posted a message on Twitter, inviting everyone to share their educational stories. And I did exactly that: I wrote about my educational journey and how, against all odds, I still managed to earn a PhD and help my siblings earn their college degrees. The response was overwhelming! My message went viral, garnering hundreds of thousands of views. I got calls from newspapers and TV channels; there was no end to it! But the really life-changing effect was that the Vice-Chancellor who had posted the original message found my phone number and called me to hear the story firsthand. She explained that the University of Cape Town (UCT) had just launched a new neuroscience institute and invited me over to see whether there were possibilities for collaboration. It was such an exciting trip! I could see so many collaborative projects … They offered me a postdoc position, allowing me to split my time between Cape Town and Zimbabwe. And then another serendipitous situation happened. Right when we were discussing possibilities for collaboration, a position unexpectedly opened for a Neuroscience Lecturer to address an urgent teaching gap in the Department at UCT. With several years of neuroscience teaching experience, I applied for the job and was subsequently offered a rare permanent appointment—an offer I could not refuse! But it also meant I would have to resign from the University in Zimbabwe before I had completed my term of duty and would have to repay my training fee, which, for me, was an unaffordable amount. In the end, they generously allowed me to repay the money in monthly installments if I was willing to help them with neuroscience teaching until they had found a proper replacement. It meant paying a lot of money each month, but, in all fairness, I had known the terms all along. And in the end, it did not weigh so heavily on my income: economic instability in Zimbabwe led the country to recalibrate the Zimbabwean Dollar's value against the US Dollar. Effectively, this meant the amount I had to pay back fizzled out. Still, I felt I had to return their generosity and have been teaching their entire neuroscience curriculum ever since, as they have been unable to find (or afford) the right person to replace me. I received the keys to my lab in Cape Town on February 1st, 2020. One month later, the lab had to be closed again due to the COVID-19 lockdown. There I was, at home, stuck in my small apartment for 60 days, in a town where I knew practically no one. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise! I was forced to slow down, which gave me a unique opportunity to think about the research niche I wanted to focus on. I dug into the literature and decided to focus on opportunistic fungal infections, specifically cryptococcal meningitis. Fungal infections are an important and relevant subject in Sub-Saharan Africa, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people each year; yet there is very little money for research. After doing extensive literature research, I wrote my first grant proposal. I applied for a Future Leaders—African Independent Research (FLAIR) Fellowship from the Royal Society. It is amazing what you will do when you are completely ignorant of any competition! This was my first big grant application: I had little track record, no pilot data—only a plan! I guess it was a compelling case because I was short-listed for the online interview, and the grant was subsequently awarded. Unfortunately, I did not receive the funding because during COVID, the UK changed its funding policy for overseas aid, and the FLAIR grants were rescinded. I was devastated. Still, the yield from my application was unexpectedly high. As part of the FLAIR program, one needed to have a senior investigator from the UK as a mentor. The problem was that I had discovered the field entirely online, so I did not know anyone in person. I sent a cold email to several people asking whether they would be willing to serve as my mentor if I got the grant. One of these messages went to Professor Gordon Brown, who—little did I know—happens to be one of the world's most renowned medical mycologists and the Director of the UK MRC-funded Centre for Medical Mycology (MRC CMM) in Exeter, UK. He answered my email directly. “Send me your proposal,” he wrote, which I did. He called me right away and has helped me incredibly ever since. I am now an adjunct-PI at the UK MRC CMM, the only neuroscientist, working with highly distinguished researchers in mycology, fungal immunology, and molecular biology. Gordon's mentorship has been extremely important for my career. He has been, and still is, one of those important people who open doors; he has strongly supported my career development. Another person who has helped me tremendously in finding my way in the system is Professor Joseph Raimondo in Cape Town. But, really, I am the product of so many people who believed in me as a scientist or as an individual …. The second unexpected sequel of my failed funding was the generous help of the University of Cape Town. They gave me seed funding to collect my first pilot data, putting me in a better position for my future applications. I was similarly awarded seed funding from the Gabriel Foundation through the Neuroscience Institute. And it worked. In 2022, I received a UK Research & Innovation MRC African Research Leaders grant and, more recently, a grant from the Wellcome Trust, together with UK collaborators. Cryptococcal meningitis is a huge problem in Africa. The fungus that causes this fatal brain infection is ubiquitously found in the environment, in contaminated soil and dust particles. Infection occurs through inhalation of fungal spores, which can lead to a primary infection in the lungs. When you are immunocompetent, the fungus is cleared or remains latent in the lungs, but in immunocompromised people, it causes an active lung infection that subsequently disseminates to the brain, leading to cryptococcal meningitis. Due to a huge burden of HIV/AIDS, Sub-Saharan Africa has a significantly large population of immunocompromised people who are vulnerable to these opportunistic infections. I focused my research on cryptococcal infections because they are one of the to African brain The disease is with and fatal brain and my lab has been out the this Cryptococcal infections had been for when I but no one had really in the right neuroscience as as I could There are so many important that may help to exactly get into the are most When in at the molecular we preclinical or on to at the of the We now have all the in and have of We have for example, that the the fungus into the brain, it and a for its It the and and it and leading to and even with the best the of patients At the of the HIV in there were a each And one always to in that these are the due to a of patients in countries to the disease before they have to medical The good is that because of for the of cryptococcal meningitis has down, although there are still hundreds of thousands of And it may now that are under in top-tier journals is hard for I could have published on small but decided to and go for more complete and competitive I do not have in yet and I have a to my in the who have large that most of in Africa do not The our into and also the and And there to be a degree of even about the conducted in Southern Africa. when I our work at international people up to me and you do all this work in I that this may from a good that to work in Africa in or it can be when it as that African can do competitive In a they are of It is to do in Africa, and more so in countries I'm really to be working at the University of Cape Town, which has invested in and strong support for medical research. scientists in other African may not have the same and to not just a of For example, I now have resources through several good but that not the of and scientific have to be from abroad and a time to be and to so that the have by the time they slow me focus on the situation in Africa, where I see When I my PhD there was no lab in Africa fungal diseases of the brain at the molecular I had to to multiple to collect part of my After my I opened the first lab that African students the opportunity to study these diseases at an I opened my lab in more and have been who over time, become more senior and up their own we will have an of neuroinfectious disease research from different in different I a lot of in the with research at a competitive Another is the of neuroscience in Southern African A years ago, we had only one neuroscience to and neuroscience across the entire of Africa, 16 there are new neuroscience in individual in Zimbabwe, and will and as That is important because people better when they have where they can and support one Through I have also been in the development of neuroscience at the I have the field have been very For instance, more neuroscience have been trained through one of the the which has been in different African countries for years on the of Professor In I was a in the and now I'm part of the in neuroscience by training neuroscience to on knowledge to their students and them to in In we will the IBRO World in Cape first time this will on African We this will neuroscientists from across the who may never before have had the opportunity to with the African neuroscience community and the and of its At the same time, the IBRO World will an for African particularly to to neuroscience and their scientific I would to my by age When it to especially I would you have a go for it! because even the is not the you will have to be strong and because there will be But if you is university I would them to time and I my during was only because I was stuck in my apartment for 60 that I was forced to and think about my future research. 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