OUR FELLOWS
Melvis Celeste Vilanculos Cossa grew up in Maputo with her parents and three brothers. She appreciates the support of her parents, and especially admires her mother, who went back to school as an adult to get a degree in marketing, and who now works in the Mozambique Agricultural and Food Security Ministry. Cossa, herself a mother of two young girls, always enjoyed science, and decided to study chemistry and biology at university. Her first degree was in Biology at the Pedagogical University of Mozambique, and she has since completed a master’s in Genetics and Biotechnology.
I want to make things better for Mozambique and Africa by helping smallholders get profit by cultivating food crops.
Field of Research
Farmers are facing challenges, due to climate change, which has made it more difficult to have improved yields. Another factor is farmers cannot afford new technologies.
Fellows Stories
Melvis Cossa selecting plants for in-vitro introduction and virus cleaning
Date: December 4, 2017
Born in Maputo, Mozambique, Melvis Cossa, a 2015 African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) Fellow, best describes her career in agricultural research as a “Twist of fate”. While studying for her bachelor’s degree at the Pedagogical University of Mozambique, Cossa was required to choose an area of specialization. On a whim, she selected biology, and began an internship in a biotechnology laboratory where she became fascinated with the laboratory work, thus, paving a path for her in the field of agriculture. Later she earned a master’s degree in genetics and biotechnology from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, in Juiz de Fora, Brazil. It was during this time in her career path that she learnt about AWARD through a friend, and she was then encouraged to apply in hopes of improving her science research skills.