The AAAS Center for Science, Technology, and Security Policy (CSTSP) initiated a series of discussion-based meetings in the broader Middle East and North Africa region, including Afghanistan and Pakistan (BMENA) to better understand critical issues that underlie international collaboration and scientific engagement in the biological sciences. This meeting was the third of four designed to address necessary components for successful collaboration among scientists between the BMENA countries and the United States.
Based on the first two meetings held in October 2010 and March 2011, participants emphasized the need to educate early career scientists (i.e., graduate students, scientists working at a post-doctoral level or equivalent, and junior faculty) about initiating and maintaining international scientific collaboration. In response to this, CSTSP in collaboration with the Institut Pasteur de Tunis and Faculty of Science Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar hosted the third meeting in Tunisia on 31 October to 1 November, 2011 to educate early-career scientists from the BMENA region about critical issues associated with international collaboration of infectious diseases.
