News from our students

Nicola Filzmoser wins 10K Cambridge University Entrepreneurs prize with ‘Happyr Health’

MSt student Nicola Filzmoser (Entrepreneurship in Healthcare Innovation at Judge Business School) in partnership with Cornelius Palm, won the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs (CUE) 10k Challenge for ‘Happyr Health’ which aims to help children with migraines. Happyr Health offers cognitive behavioural therapy to children with migraines via mobile games. They hope this will help to make growing up more playful than painful. It uses technology, initially an app, which delivers supporting and coping strategies for the child and its family in the format of games and stories.

Rebecka Nordenlöw’s poem is published in The Mays Anthology

Rebecka was delighted to share the news that one of her poems was published in the 28th edition of The Mays. Since 1992, The Mays has published an annual selection of the best and most exciting new writing and artwork from current students at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. It is widely recognised and respected as one of the most notable student-produced anthologies, reaching every major literary agent each year, and making an appearance in bookstores across the country. Rebecka is a third-year English student and received the Madeleine Jörgensen Prize for First Class Results in Tripos in her second year.

Medical students graduate early and join the fight against Coronavirus

The newest cohort of junior doctors joining the NHS and the frontline of the fight against coronavirus include 8 successful medical graduates from Lucy Cavendish College. Following guidance from the General Medical Council, permission was granted for the graduation dates of University of Cambridge medical students to be brought forward. This allowed many of our graduates to support the NHS as interim Foundation Year doctors, working in supported and supervised environments. Several Lucy Cavendish College medical students have commendably stepped into hands-on caring positions in nursing homes. Other medical students have taken on administrative and supportive roles in general practitioner surgeries and their dispensaries. Another body to benefit from LCC student involvement has been Cambridge Student Community Action. Specific involvement with their “Anxiety Slayers” project has been well received, a project which involves interacting with vulnerable children during the pandemic.

Karen Thomas awarded prestigious scholarship

PhD student Karen Thomas has been awarded the prestigious Healthcare Leadership Academy (HLA) scholarship. The HLA works with healthcare students and early-stage professionals to develop healthcare leaders of the future. Karen (PhD, Public Health and Primary Care) will be working on a project to showcase healthcare professional leaders who have made important and innovative changes to improve clinical practice. If more newly qualified allied healthcare professionals thought that being a leader and change-maker in their field was achievable at an early stage, she believes they would be equipped to shift the trajectory of what is viewed as a successful allied healthcare career path. She will be joining the talented cohort of 2020-2021 HLA scholars and undergoing her leadership training in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Anastasia Georgiou wins Gladstone Travel Prize

Anastasia is a student of graduate medicine at Lucy Cavendish. She always considered studying medicine but never felt certain until she was a bit older and had more experience. She originally studied Law at Oxford and during her time there became very interested in medical law and ethics, as well as in clinical practice.

The application process involved submission of a detailed itinerary and budget, followed by a panel interview in London. The grant is given on the condition that applicants write a post-trip report of their experience explaining the route and what they learn along the way. Anastasia’s application was titled ‘Learn to Cook like an Italian’ and included detailed plans to visit olive oil-producing factories in Liguria, vineyards in Tuscany and pizzerias in Rome.

Elisabeth Gill wins first prize in the Department of Engineering’s photography competition

Our Phd student Elisabeth Gill (Research group: Biomechanics) won the First Prize for ‘Suspending Patterns’, her macro photo of complex fibrous architectures that can be designed with an electrospinning and 3D printing method. She developed the method for her PhD. 3D-printed support pillars and applied voltage are used to pattern suspended gelatin microfibres with a technique called low-voltage electrospinning patterning. Also, Our Postdoc, Dr Zhong-Nan Wang (Research Associate in Computational Fluid Dynamics) won the third prize with ‘Turbulence and Sound’. This flow-acoustic simulation shows the noise generated from a turbulent jet interacting with a surface. The coloured isosurfaces show the turbulent structures and the background grey-scale contour shows the acoustic waves. The Photography Competition at the Department of Engineering is sponsored by ZEISS (Scanning electron microscopy division) and celebrated its 16th year in 2019. Entries are required to be eye-catching images and videos that relate to research or teaching in the Department or engineers out in the field.

Clarissa Hjalmarsson publishes a paper in African Studies Review

Clarissa is a graduate medic (CGCM) with a previous degree in Arabic & History from SOAS University of London. She joined the Lucy Cavendish family in 2017. Other than as a committed medical student, she describes herself as a feminist and a runner. Her publication titled ‘Healthcare of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front and its Politicization, 1970-91: Treating the Body Politic’ explores the health service provided by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) during the Eritrean Liberation War, and its political dimensions and implications.

Jessica Henry presents research at the European College for Neuropsychopharmacology’s Conference

At the European College for Neuropsychopharmacology’s (ECNP) 2019 conference in Copenhagen, Jessica presented research she’d conducted with Dr Karen Ersche at Cambridge University’s Department of Psychiatry. Their project was based on previous research findings that patients with alcohol and cannabis dependency show reduced sensitivity to tasks involving reward gain and loss avoidance. This has implications for treatment, as many rehabilitation programmes will give or withdraw privileges depending on compliance. Extensive research demonstrating this is an ineffective treatment strategy for patients with dependency highlights our need for novel approaches. Her project was interested to see if this ‘altered gain/loss sensitivity’ presented itself early in disease processes. Jessica is a third-year graduate entry medical student. She previously studied Biomedical Sciences and she has got a strong interest in neuroscience and mental health.