Winners of latest bursary grants announced

We have awarded five new bursaries in our latest round of grant awards.

Two UK veterinary undergraduates were thrilled to win all expenses paid bursaries to attend the British Science Festival in Aberdeen from 4-9 September 2012.

The bursary winners were Liv Nathan (pictured), a third year veterinary student at the Royal Dick School of Veterinary Studies and Alahel Mahdmina, a second year veterinary student at the Royal Veterinary College.

Liv said “I am very enthusiastic about providing real-life context to science and giving people a space to consider issues arising around science.”

The students were required to use their observations and experiences to help the Trust develop future outreach activities to inform and inspire public audiences about veterinary clinical practice and research.

One of their achievements was to film an interview with Dr Maggie Aderin-Pockock MBE, a space scientist. The interview will be available to view on the website shortly.

Two bursaries were offered to attend the upcoming joint symposium ‘Antimicrobial resistance in human and veterinary medicine – one health, one problem’ to be held at the Royal College of Physicians, in London, on Tuesday, 2 October 2012.

One winning application was from Cahir King, a practitioner from Downe Veterinary Clinic in County Down, Northern Ireland. Cahir said:

"It is a privilege to attend a symposium at which so many experts in their field will be speaking. Any vet who has worked on farms will be more than familiar with bugs which are resistant to antibiotic treatment."

The second winning application was from James Swann, a Junior Clinical Training Scholar (Small Animal) at the Royal Veterinary College. James said:

"I am particularly interested in the application of clinical audit in practice to assess problems like AMR and design effective strategies to deal with them.

"I believe it should be possible to provide simple audit kits for practices to download and implement, removing much of the inertia that prevents such ideas from being initiated."

The final bursary was for a place at the Veterinary Biomedical and Pharma Sciences (VBMPS) Congress on 15 and 16 October 2012 at the ICC in Birmingham.

The winning entry was from Alexander Stoll, a final year student at the Royal Veterinary College, who acted as the Royal Veterinary College and UK Student Ambassador to the European Commission for the One Health message.

The Trust was impressed with Alexander’s enthusiasm and active engagement in subjects related to One Health. He is a member of the Royal Society for Public Health and a member of the Society of Biology.

Alexander said “I am proud of this profession and basic science and the one-health concept is long overdue for celebration.”