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Dr Julia Mwesigwa Epidemiologist Disease Control and Elimination Theme won the first-tier position of the Young Investigator Award competition held at the recently concluded 67th annual tropical medicine conference of  the American Society Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH). The conference took place from the 28th October to 1st November 2018 in New Orleans, USA. Julia submitted results from her on-going PhD studies on the “Impact of mass drug administration on malaria transmission dynamics in The Gambia” at the ASTMH conference. The competition gave Julia the opportunity to present her research findings and defend the results and conclusions to judges and other scientists.

The competition was three-stage, from the abstract submission followed by a 15 minutes poster presentation and concluded with a 20 minutes oral presentation. Julia competed against researchers from Africa, Asia, and the USA.

Julia was also awarded a competitive travel award from the ASTMH to attend the conference where she chaired a session on the case detection for malaria elimination. This session focused on diagnostics for malaria detection used in focal screening of malaria in high-risk populations and mass testing and screening in low transmission settings aiming for malaria elimination.

Professor Umberto D’Alessandro Unit Director MRCG at LSHTM commented “I am particularly happy and proud Julia won this competitive award, first because I am Julia’s PhD supervisor, and second because it shows both the high-quality research and training carried out by the MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM”.

Commenting Dr Mwesigwa said “I have been blessed to have supportive supervisors and mentors both within and outside MRC Unit the Gambia at LSHTM who have continuously encouraged me.”

Dr Julia is supervised by Prof Umberto D’Alessandro and Dr Jane Achan at the MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM