Two student presentation sessions held in collaboration with the TriageTB project

In April, ENDxTB consortium members participated in two student presentation sessions that were organized in collaboration with its sister project, TriageTB. In the sessions, eight Masters and PhD students involved in the two initiatives presented their work and received feedback from senior members of the two projects.

“All presentations had a very high quality and covered an impressive range of different approaches. We had presentations covering everything from the host response investigating gene expression of host genes, identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis signatures to an engineer showcasing his work with developing an immunosensing system,” says Prof Hazel Dockrell, TriageTB Capacity Development Lead, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), who chaired the sessions in collaboration with the project management team from LINQ.

COVID-19 has posed several logistical and administrative challenges to the ENDxTB and TriageTB projects. As the consortia successfully navigated the fast-changing pandemic reality, mitigating the immediate impact on clinical activities took centre stage. The Student Presentation Sessions helped put the focus back onto the science and capacity building.

This was the first time that the two projects facilitated this type of activity in this format and the organizing team was extremely pleased to see that numerous young researchers were interested in presenting their work.

"This experience taught me how to prepare a presentation for an audience not familiar with my work as well as gave me the opportunity to share my research with my peers. I enjoyed learning about different research projects from around the world and gaining valuable feedback from experts in the field," says Kala Early, Research Assistant at the Infectious Disease Research Center at Colorado State University and part of the ENDxTB consortium.

After the first events, more students have expressed an interest in presenting their work, and the organizers are currently planning a third session in the autumn.

“I was glad to see so many members of the TriageTB and ENDxTB consortia connecting to the first two sessions and hope that even more people will attend potential future sessions. The presentations sparked a lot of thoughts about our current study and what research results we can expect to see in the future,” says Prof Dockrell.