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PhD students work with public partners to enhance research at ULLA Summer School
15 July 2022
PhD students from different countries and disciplines came together at the ULLA summer school to discuss their research with a patient and public panel. They came away with specific actions to take forwards for their research.
The European University Consortium for Pharmaceutical Sciences, ULLA, was founded in 1992 as a European Consortium for (postgraduate) training in the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Over the years, ULLA has been extended and the consortium now consists of 10 partners.
The primary aim of the ULLA network is to enhance collaboration within education and research in pharmaceutical sciences between the member universities. One of the cornerstones of ULLA are the biennial summer schools for PhD students. In addition, ULLA workshops and lectures help to stimulate interactions.
Image: Dr Sara Garfield with Professor Cate Whittlesea and Professor Li Wei of the UCL School of Pharmacy.
Students from across Europe came together in July for the latest ULLA summer school, which took place at Uppsala University in Sweden. Students were offered a range of courses which covered a wide range of topics across the pharmaceutical sciences.
Some of the topics covered by UCL School of Pharmacy staff were:
- Day 1 Workshop on Protein Structure Exploration in Drug Design and Discovery for Non-Computational Scientists
- Post-marketing research into the safety of drugs using Big Data
- Day 2 Workshop on Protein Structure Exploration in Drug Design and Discovery for Non-Computational Scientists
- Patient and public involvement (PPI) in research: Integration and dissemination
- Biomarker development and implementation in clinical development
- Model-informed Drug Development
Students in the PPI course worked with three public partners to learn how to address recruitment challenges relating to a clinical trial, disseminate their research to the public and to involve public partners further to enhance their research. One of the students said of the course: "I felt it was a full engagement with actual patients and the public". One of the members of the public partners said: "I found the students to be very receptive, engrossed and asking challenging questions. In fact, we had a lot to chat about. It is reassuring that the stuff we have been doing for many years was clearly interesting and stimulating for them".
The PPI course was led by Sara Garfield who worked together with Cate Whittlesea and Mine Orlu.
About ULLA
European University Consortium for Pharmaceutical Sciences, ULLA, was founded in 1992 as a European Consortium for (postgraduate) training in the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences. ULLA takes the name from the cities of its founding universities: Uppsala, London, Leiden and Amsterdam.
Further information:
Image credit:
Dr Ruth Brauer