Mission
To elevate Bangladesh’s capabilities in biological, medical, and agricultural sciences by providing free, structured, peer-mentored research training to any student with the time and motivation to learn.
Open-access research academy · Bangladesh
Research does not need money. It needs attention and time.
“Zero Funds, Infinite Potential.”
BORA is a free, volunteer-run research academy that trains Bangladeshi students and early-career scientists to design, run, and publish real research — using open data, open-source tools, and mentorship that costs the learner nothing.
1 → 2Mentorship multiplier
5Research tracks
12Weeks per cohort
৳0Cost to every learner
The gap we exist to close
Thousands graduate. Almost none publish.
Bangladesh produces thousands of life-science, medical, veterinary and agricultural graduates every year, yet the overwhelming majority never author a single research paper. The barrier is rarely talent — it is access to equipment, mentorship, journals, and structured training.
Dry-lab research — genomics, AMR surveillance, disease modelling, meta-analysis — needs a laptop, an internet connection, and guidance. We supply the guidance.
Why we exist
Mission & Vision
Vision
To put Bangladesh’s name on real, citable, internationally visible scientific output — produced by a self-sustaining community of volunteer researchers who once had no other route into research.
How we think
Core Philosophy
Knowledge must remain free and open. By removing the financial barrier to training, we let capability — not funding — decide who gets to do science.
Free Access
Every learning resource, tool, and dataset BORA uses must be free and openly licensed. No fees, no paywalls, no hidden costs to any learner — ever.
Peer-Powered Mentorship
Every published researcher is expected to mentor the next cohort. Teaching capacity grows with output instead of requiring paid staff.
Publish, Don’t Just Learn
Every cohort works toward a real, defensible analysis or manuscript — not tutorials, not certificates of attendance.
The engine
The Mentorship Tree — a 1-to-2 model
Every researcher who joins BORA agrees to one condition: train at least two undergraduate interns, free of charge. When those interns publish their first collaborative work, they become mentors and take on two of their own. Teaching capacity compounds instead of running out.
1 Core Mentor
Intern
Intern
Intern
Intern
Intern
Intern
Publish → mentor → publish. One mentor becomes a network.
What we work on
Five research tracks
Deliberately narrow and deliberately local — the fields where Bangladesh generates real genomic and public-health data but has almost no local computational capacity to analyse it.
One Health & Public Health
Human–animal–environment health intersections.
Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Surveillance, statistics, and mathematical modelling.
AMR & Genomic Surveillance
Resistance patterns from public genomic repositories.
Omics & Bioinformatics
Genomics, transcriptomics, computational biology.
Veterinary, Agriculture & Fisheries
Food security and animal health through data.
Propose your own
Have a question that fits Bangladesh’s open data and needs no wet lab? Bring it — mentors are matched to problems, not just to tracks.
Year-one targets
What success looks like in twelve months
100+Students onboarded
8–12Capstone projects
3–5Preprints or papers
12Core mentors leading groups
Targets from the BORA Academy Proposal, Section 9. Progress will be published openly on this site as each cohort completes.
Ready to do real research?
Applications for the pilot cohort open through the registration form. No fee, no entrance exam — just a laptop, an internet connection, and consistent hours.