Ariel Pradipta is a senior research fellow in the Genomik Solidaritas Indonesia Lab, focusing on improving the access to genomic-related tests in Indonesia. After a master's degree from the University of Newcastle, UK, he obtained his Ph.D. at Osaka University, Japan and completed a postdoc at the Osaka University Immunology Frontier Research Center. He is dedicated to finding ways to expand Indonesia’s scientific contribution in the field of genetics and biomolecular research.

Indonesia is the largest South-East Asian country both geographically and by population size. The COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid shift of SARS-CoV-2 variants emphasized the need for a nationwide genomic surveillance program. We built a public-private partnership and stimulated a 500% sequencing activity increase in three months. We provided special attention to monitoring wet-lab procedures and agile bioinformatics, with a special emphasis on informing collaborators on the many facets of genomic sequencing results to enable public health actions. We report the pitfalls that we faced and our strategies that led to a high-throughput nanopore-based WGS lab contributing to the national surveillance program.