University Scientist awarded top prize
Published: 5 July 2013
University of Glasgow scientist, Dr Katie Hampson, has been named as a top prize winner in this year’s UK & Ireland L’Oréal UNESCO For Women in Science Awards.
University of Glasgow scientist, Dr Katie Hampson, has been named as a top prize winner in this year’s UK & Ireland L’Oréal UNESCO For Women in Science Awards.
Dr Hampson is a Wellcome Trust Fellow in the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine, College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences. 
Together with winners from Cambridge, Birkbeck and St. Andrews Universities, she was awarded £15,000 to fund her research career.
The awards were made at a ceremony in London to outstanding early career female scientists. The winners can use the award to spend on whatever they may need to continue their research, from buying scientific equipment to paying for childcare or travel.
They were selected by a jury of eminent scientists, chaired by Professor Frances Ashcroft, Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford and 2012 FWIS International Laureate.
Professor Ashcroft said: “These awards are a joy to judge. We had an outstanding shortlist of eight exceedingly bright women who care deeply about their areas of study. This made selecting the winners an incredibly tough task, but it also showed the extraordinary range of scientific research being carried out by female scientists in the UK and Ireland.”
Dr Hampson was chosen for her work investigating strategies for canine rabies elimination.
Despite intensive effort and substantial technological progress, only two infectious diseases have been globally eradicated and there is little scientific guidance for programmes aiming to eliminate persistent foci of infection.
Rabies is a deadly disease that kills thousands of people annually. Having recently declared global elimination of canine rabies as an objective, the WHO, OIE and FAO are working together to develop a stepwise framework to assist countries reach this goal. The aim of Katie's research is to determine key factors contributing to the success of rabies control programmes, and to identify requirements for achieving elimination.
Dr Hampson said: “With the help of this fellowship I will compile data on rabies incidence, control measures and characteristics of populations and landscapes from a diversity of settings. Tapping into my network of collaborators in countries where rabies is a major threat, and capitalizing on large-scale epidemiological studies I have established in Tanzania, I will fit mechanistic models to these data. I will determine the impacts of vaccination on controlling and ultimately eliminating rabies, and will explore strategies for effectively achieving and maintaining freedom from disease. This research will contribute directly to the global framework for canine rabies elimination and shed light on the fundamental question of how acute infectious diseases persist.”
First published: 5 July 2013
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