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Dr Malick Gibani

"The training grant provided by HIC-Vac offered me with the opportunity to attend the 2018 ECCMID conference in Madrid, where I presented some new data arising from the typhoid and paratyphoid challenge programme at the University of Oxford. These data were presented in a session entitled ‘Vaccines in the Real World’ and emphasised how insights from human challenge studies have the potential to directly inform vaccine strategies and policies. The talk was well received and sparked several insightful questions from the audience – which, in turn, provided valuable inputs when putting together the manuscript. The abstract was awarded a prize for ‘Best Abstract’ in its category.

ECCMID is one of the foremost annual conferences for infectious diseases and clinical microbiology - bringing together researchers and clinicians from across Europe and worldwide – and so provided an ideal platform to disseminate our research. Reviewing the conference programme, very few posters and oral presentations were presenting data derived from controlled human infection studies. To a degree, my talk provided an opportunity to advocate for the use of controlled human infection studies in vaccine development to a wider audience, as well as stimulating debate about the ethical issues and practicalities of conducting such studies.

In addition, I attended a round-table session organised by the Trainees Association of ESCMID (TAE Trainees Day 21st April), which afforded me the opportunity to directly talk to experts in an informal setting offering future careers advice. Based upon this experience, I have since successfully applied for an ECCID training observership at the European Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Stockholm to be undertaken in September 2018.

I would like to thank HiC Vac for their generous support of early career researchers – I have no doubts that this scheme will be of great value to myself and others moving forward."

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