In conjunction with the University of Liverpool (UoL), the LSTM oversees and provides undergraduate teaching within the Tropical Disease Biology (TDB) programme. This summer a total of 24 TDB students graduated and the LSTM’s footprint in BSc teaching has again grown with several of our taught modules hosting up to 60 students.
Best student and performance prize was awarded to Elliot Otty who scored the year’s highest marks to secure a prestigious first-class degree. During his 3rd year, Elliot conducted a three-month research project, in the laboratory of Alvaro Acosta-Serano, to assess the use of nitisinone, a tyrosine degradation inhibitor, as a potential novel insecticide for sand flies and mosquitoes.
Elliot has written a short article of his experiences here at the LSTM and UoL.
“After receiving my TDB degree, and looking back on the past three years, I am so glad that I trusted my instinct to study this distinctive degree at the UoL and LSTM. Our final year was nearly entirely based in LSTM and was without a doubt the best and most intellectually challenging year of my undergraduate study. Exploring impacts of numerous diseases of the tropics on public health, and how we can reduce their impact, made me realise how intricate our level of knowledge was becoming in our chosen field.
LSTM gave me a tremendous sense of academic community, as tied together with an infectious desire to discover, share and learn about tropical diseases, a passion transferred to us by LSTM staff. Although our TDB classes were sometimes small, the benefit of this cannot be understated. The concepts you learn in TDB, particularly in the final year, are very new and the LSTM environment provided a friendly, individually tailored learning environment. I now fully believe that I am part of focused academic community that is striving to reduce the burden of some of the most dreadful infectious diseases on the planet.”
We congratulate Elliot and the wish the class of 2018 TDB much success in the future.