International Day of Women and Girls in Science

This year’s theme is Women Scientists at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19.  Teddy Hall is extremely proud of all Oxford scientists and its own student involvement in this vital area of research and action:

Hannah Sharp (2017, DPhil in Infection, Immunology, and Translational Medicine) writes, “I am a final year PhD student in the Emerging Pathogens lab at the Jenner Institute, supervised by Professors Teresa Lambe, Sarah Gilbert and Paul Klenerman. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been fortunate enough to work in many stages of the pre-clinical and clinical trials for the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine, which has recently been approved by the MHRA in the UK. I have been involved in the amazing team of individuals who process (pre-)clinical trial samples and set up immunogenicity assays, which ultimately means we can determine vaccine efficacy. I have also conducted exciting further immunological analysis on patient samples to understand how vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection affects the immune system.”

Katie Mellor (2019, DPhil Musculoskeletal Sciences: Biomedical Data Science) writes, “I conduct clinical trial methodology research which looks at how we can improve the clinical trials that we are doing. Although my DPhil is not directly related to any COVID clinical trials per se, I jumped on the opportunity to volunteer to be in the Oxford COVID Vaccine trial. I was in first group (phase 1) of volunteers and was vaccinated back in April 2020. It has been great to experience a clinical trial from a participant (rather than researcher) perspective.”

We applaud both Hannah and Katie and wish them well in their continued valuable work.

The events of February 11 also present us with the opportunity to reflect more widely on women and girls in science.  We are pleased to report that the proportion of female STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students at Teddy Hall is at an all-time high of 42%, with our access and outreach teams and all Hall academics continually striving to maintain the curve on its up-ward trajectory.

Join the event live @UNWebTV with full details available on the UN website