‘HIGH-FLYING’ biomedical undergraduate Louise Foster has won a prestigious award to join a laboratory research team looking at the causes of heart disease.
The 27-year-old from Wigan is excelling in her second year of the University of Salford BSc in Biomedical Science.
And she came a step closer to her ambition of studying for a PhD after she was selected by the Physiological Society for a prestigious ‘vacation studentship’ – basically getting paid to join a lab team for the summer!
“Louise is incredibly bright and has real potential to become a professional scientist,” comments Dr David Greensmith, of the Biomedical Research Centre.
Exceptionally able
“She is exceptionally able as evidenced by her 85% 1st year average and 1st class grades in her second year to date, and she already works part time in a NHS laboratory giving us every confidence her lab work will be of equally high standard to her academic ability.”
Louise will join Dr Greensmith’s research project this summer investigating the cellular basis for cardiac dysfunction in sepsis. Severe sepsis is an immune response to systemic infection and results in approximately 40,000 UK deaths each year.
Much of Dr Greensmith’s work relies on the ability to quantify levels of oxidative stress in isolated heart cells. Louise will focus on optimisation of a high-throughput assay of cellular oxidative stress to make this process more efficient. She will look also at screening of a large range of cytokines to assess which are fundamentally capable of elevating intracellular oxidative stress in the heart.
Students who wish to find out more about Physiological Society vacation awards, can find out more http://www.physoc.org/undergraduate-vacation-studentship-scheme