Richard has been awarded the Medical Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership (MRC DTP) for his doctoral studies at the LSTM. MRC DTP CASE awards are given to outstanding, highly motivated individuals from across the globe with the opportunity to work with world-leading experts at the cutting edge of new research. In this studentship, he will be studying the statistical methods for the analysis of multi-antibody data to inform malaria control and elimination under the supervision of Dr. Emanuele Giorgi from Lancaster University.
In 2020, he was awarded the CORE MLW Pre-Master internship, working in the Malaria Epidemiology Research Group. These competitive internships are offered to candidates who show early potential to develop into independent researchers over time, and who, with senior support and mentorship, will be able to develop competitive international MSc and Ph.D. training fellowship applications within the period of their internship. During his internship, he worked on a simulation study aimed at exploring the effect of changing survey locations on malaria prevalence estimates in malaria surveys under the supervision of Dr. Anja Terlouw and Dr. Michelle Stanton. While working on the project, he secured a scholarship to study for a master’s in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, (LSTM) which he completes in September of this year.
Richard Kamwezi, Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery graduate from the College of Medicine, the University of Malawi now studying for his MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine under the GSK Scholarship for Future Health Leaders, joined MLW in 2018 as a Study Coordinator for the NEOIMMUNE Study under the Immunity and Infectious group (previously known as the Viral Immunology research group)
Richard is full of excitement about this achievement, and these are his words, “I am very excited about the opportunity to do my doctoral studies at the prestigious Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. This studentship will give me the opportunity to learn different aspects of statistical methods development and translational science from Lancaster University and LSTM. Additionally, this studentship will harness the skills that I have been developing in the fields of immunology, quantitative science, and malaria epidemiology. This, for me, is a lifetime opportunity to gain the skills I need to reach my career goal of being an independent researcher in infectious disease surveillance”.
Richard is thankful to MLW as he indicates this would not have been possible without the support of the PIs at MLW and the Training Committee. “Throughout the time I have been within the institute, the Training Committee has been instrumental in shaping my applications through the centralized internal screening process and has provided funding for my career development in many ways including the CORE Pre-MSc internship. I count myself as one of the products of MLW’s mission of training the train the next generation of scientists.”
Keep progressing Richard!
