DAAD Alumni Support Fellows

“My main motivation is my own experience in Germany. The loneliness, the uncertainty of moving in a world you don’t understand … That’s what I experienced myself.” This is how Tomabu Adjobimey describes the reasons behind his voluntary commitment to DAAD Alumni & Friends.

Since 2008, the DAAD alumnus from Benin has been one of the contact members in the regional group in Bonn. At that time, there was a call for new members who wanted to become actively involved. Up until then, he had been a participating DAAD scholarship holder; he then decided to join DAAD Alumni & Friends and become involved on behalf of other students from abroad.

Since then, Tomabu, member of the Friends of the DAAD’s Executive Committee since July 2016, has been one of those organising welcome meetings at the beginning of the semester and regular informal gatherings for DAAD scholarship holders in Bonn. He offers events such as theme nights on Benin, Nepal and Indonesia. On these occasions, he and some scholarship holders present a country and the culture of that country, featuring a short presentation, music and dance as well as typical food and drink. In addition, Tomabu is the contact person for Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Aachen in the host family programme “Deutschland hautnah – Germany behind the scenes”.

Tomabu has also come a long way professionally since coming to Germany on a DAAD research fellowship in 2005 as a doctoral candidate in immunology: after three years he completed his doctorate in cell biology with magna cum laude. Today, he is head of the human immunology group at Bonn University Hospital, where he is investigating the consequences and mechanisms of immune suppression induced by parasitic worms (helminths). Here, too, he can build on his own experience with the DAAD: by acting as an academic supervisor of doctoral candidates supported by the DAAD.