All LURE scholars conduct research in the summer vacation between the second and third year of the MBChB curriculum. Some choose to extend the research by working in other vacations, by intercalation or by utilising opportunities in MBChB research strands. They develop expertise in their chosen topic and this can lead to the submission of research articles for publication.
Networking at Conferences
It might seem to be hard, boring work standing for hours at a time next to a poster, but the effort is well worth while when it becomes an opportunity to network. People ask you questions, talk about their own research and challenge your perceptions. When LURE scholar Simon Romaine presented his poster at the New Orleans meeting of the American Heart Association, he met Dr Katherisan of Harvard University, who offered him a research elective at Massachusetts General Hospital. Simon won additional funding from Heart Research UK to help him travel to the USA and he spent six productive weeks steeped in the competitive research environment at Harvard.
After graduating with MBChB in July 2010, Dr Simon Romaine secured an academic foundation post in cardiology at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. His publications and attendance at conferences gave him evidence of research ability and thus he beat the competition to obtain his first preference foundation post in which he is able to continue his experimental work.
Simon’s experience at Harvard inspired Savile LURE scholar Nic Orsi to travel to Boston the following year to undertake research with Dr Gunawardena on Development of hierarchical Bayesian networks for modelling immune responses in vivo. Nic was able to finance this trip because he was the first LURE scholar to win a LEAD award. So Simon’s poster led to two Leeds students performing medical research at the prestigious Harvard University.
