LBEP MSc student wins prize

Marleen wins 'best research project' prize in The Netherlands

Marleen van Smoorenburg, a U/Select master student from the Infection and Immunity master at Utrecht University, visited the Fitzgerald lab from February-August 2018 for her final master internship. She received funding from both U/Select and Erasmus+ to join the LBEP lab to work on staphylococcal superantigens.

During her internship, Marleen used bio-informatics to analyse the population distribution and allelic variation of a novel staphylococcal superantigen, under supervision of Dr Bryan Wee and Dr Gonzalo Yebra. She subsequently cloned and expressed the novel superantigen and characterised its function in the lab, where she was supervised by Dr Manouk Vrieling. Apart from working in the lab, Marleen joined the Fitzgerald group to the Microbiology Society Annual Conference in Birmingham. And, importantly, she got to experience some nice lab outings and the Edinburgh Fringe during her stay too.

Upon her return to The Netherlands, Marleen presented her work at the U/Select Symposium in Utrecht for a jury of leading scientists from Utrecht University. Marleen was awarded first prize and €1500 for 'best research project', and we are very, very proud of her!!