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Every year, the Nuffield Department of Medicine (NDM) awards NDM Prizes to its most outstanding graduate research students. MORU was well represented this year, with Mo Yin and Rebecca Inglis highly commended in the category NDM Overall Prize, for conducting research with an outstanding impact. Will Schilling (MORU) received a prize as first year DPhil student.

Mo Yin, Rebecca Inglis and William Schilling

Working on her DPhil thesis in Oxford, Mo Yin (left) is currently conducting a multinational clinical trial on optimising treatment duration for ventilator-associated pneumonia with the aim of reducing antimicrobial resistance. During the pandemic, she worked with Public Health England and the WHO mainly focusing on hospital-acquired COVID-19 amongst patients and healthcare workers. Supervised in her DPhil by Prof Ben Cooper and Assoc Prof Direk Limmathurotsakul, Mo Yin particularly wished to thank " Ben Cooper for being my biggest supporter and advocate over the years, and of course the many lovely friends and colleagues at MORU who have become my second family."

Currently writing up her DPhil thesis and preparing for a post-doc project in India and Bangladesh, Rebecca Inglis (2nd right) continues to support the COVID response in Laos and Myanmar. In their comments NDM said: "Rebecca’s DPhil research has made an outstanding impact at a national and international level, being adopted by the Government of Laos, the WHO, and beyond." For her DPhil, Rebecca developed and tested an intervention to improve the care of critically ill adults in Laos. The Essential Critical Care course uses interactive training methods to teach a context-adapted curriculum to nurses and doctors. The first of its kind to be developed using a behaviour change framework, the revised course was accredited by the WHO, taken up by the Lao government, and rolled out to every ICU in Laos by Rebecca and her trainers. Supporting the government’s COVID response in Laos, Rebecca's input led directly to key changes of policy, including a change in the national case definition. Available online, the training materials have been used in India, Myanmar, Gambia and Nepal. Supervised in her DPhil by Prof. Niall Winters (UK Department of Education), Dr Chris Pell (University of Amsterdam) and Prof. Arjen Dondorp (MORU), Bex expressed "huge thanks to my endlessly inspiring colleagues: Mr Khamchanh Bounphasert, Ms Pascale Chantavong, Ajarn Khamsai Detleuxay, Dr Shogo Kubota, Dr Pone Manikham and to our tireless team of trainers."

While completing the first year of a DPhil focussed on COVID-19, Will Schilling (right) continues to work as COPCOV Co-PI with Prof. Sir Nick White. Funded by Wellcome, the global trial COPCOV is set to be the world’s largest prevention study in the pandemic. Importantly, the question COPCOV set out to answer – can chloroquine/ hydroxychloroquine prevent COVID-19 – remains unanswered at this time, and the study could provide the definitive answer. As of 5 Oct, COPCOV has enrolled over 3,162 participants -- up from 1,000 at the end of June! New sites in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Indonesia, Kenya and Nepal have joined those in Mali, Pakistan and Zambia, and now closed sites in Thailand, Niger and the UK. COPCOV plan to finish recruitment of new participants by end Oct, with local team approval where drug shelf-life allows and further recruitment is possible. 

 

Many congratulations Mo Yin, Bex and Will!

- With thanks to Liz Ashley, Bex Inglis, Mo Yin, Claire-Lise Escher Kessler and John Bleho for text and photo contributions.