LSTM PhD student Josie Parker was awarded the student-voted best talk at 2015’s Royal Entomological Society’s Post Graduate Forum, held this week at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, while LSTM PhD student Ashwaq Alnazawi was awarded second prize in the student-voted poster presentation.
The annual postgraduate forum provides a platform for early-career researchers, working in all fields of entomology, to meet and share their research. There were a number of postgraduate talks and posters as well as invited speakers who lectured on the importance of science communication in research.
Josie’s talk was one of 16 student talks delivered throughout the two day meeting. It was based on the work she is carrying out for her PhD, in which she utilises a purpose-built video system that tracks the movements of mosquitoes, to understand how their behaviour might be influenced by insecticide. Human volunteers are placed under a bed net, and the mosquitoes’ movements are recorded and analysed. The insight gained in the work will be essential to developing innovative new approaches targeting vectors of malaria and other infections.
Students came from all over the UK as well as further afield to meet their colleagues within the field and discuss their research. Josie Parker, who is a student in LSTM’s Department of Vector Biology said: “I really enjoyed the Postgrad Forum, meeting the other students and hearing about all the interesting research going on in different areas of entomology. Thanks to Arctec for sponsoring the student prizes, and to the RES student reps for organising such a good meeting.”
As well as the student talks there were a number of poster presentations, student Ashwaq Alnazawi, also from LSTM’s Department of Vector Biology took second place in the student-voted poster presentation, for her PhD project report on insecticide resistance in the mosquito vectors of dengue in Saudi Arabia.
Thanks to Maurizio Benelli University of Bologna for the photo of the LSTM students at the event.