Alberto García-Basteiro Receives the Stephen Lawn Memorial Prize and Michelle Turner the inaugural EPICOH Mid-Career Award

Tuberculosis researcher Alberto García-Basteiro and occupational epidemiologist Michelle Turner have joined the list of ISGlobal researchers who have recently received awards for their work.

Alberto García-Basteiro, associate professor at ISGlobal and physician-epidemiologist at Barcelona’s Hospital Clínic, has just been awarded the 2021 Stephen Lawn Memorial Prize.

The prize was established in 2016 to recognise researchers aged under 40 years conducting promising work focused on reducing the disease burden of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.  It is an initiative of the Stephen Lawn Memorial Fund, which was established in 2016 through a partnership between the TB Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (United Kingdom), the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and The Union. The Fund is also supported by the British medical journal The Lancet.

The jury evaluated the innovative component, scientific rigor and quality of García Basteiro’s research.

García-Basteiro is the Coordinator of the Tuberculosis and HIV Research Unit at the Manhiça Health Research Centre in Mozambique. Since he joined ISGlobal in 2012, he has taken part in numerous different research projects and clinical trials involving diseases related to poverty, mainly in Central America and Africa. He is currently coordinating clinical trials related to tuberculosis as well as several epidemiological studies evaluating new diagnostic tools. He also lectures on epidemiology as part of the ISGlobal-University of Barcelona Master in Global Health, chairs the Tuberculosis Group of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and has published more than 140 articles in top, peer-reviewed biomedical journals.

Earlier this year, García-Basteiro’s achievements were also recognised by the ERS, which presented him their Early Career Member Award 2021. In 2017 he received the The Union Young Investigator Prize. 

“Stephen Lawn was a model for everyone involved in the fight against tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in Africa, and his work continues to inspire many researchers,” explains García-Basteiro. “Receiving a prize from institutions with enormous prestige in our field of research is a great source of pride and also confers great responsibility, inspiring us to continue our work and to develop tools that can improve the control of TB in the world’s most vulnerable populations”, he adds.

The official award ceremony for the Stephen Lawn TB/HIV Research Leadership Prize was held at the close of the Union World Conference on Lung Health, the most important annual event in the field of tuberculosis research.

Michelle Turner, Mid-Career Award in Occupational Epidemiology

Michelle Turner, another ISGlobal researcher, received the inaugural Mid-Career Award in Occupational Epidemiology from the Scientific Committee on Epidemiology in Occupational Health (EPICOH) of the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH). In their comments, the Committee highlighted the strength of the nomination and the broad scope of Turner’s scientific work.

Michelle Turner is an associate research professor at ISGlobal. She was elected as Vice-Chair of the 40-country European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action “Coordination and Harmonization of European Occupational Cohorts (OMEGA-NET)” which seeks to optimize the use of occupational, industrial, and population cohorts in Europe by large-scale collaboration, coordination and harmonization. Building directly on OMEGA-NET, she serves as Co-Leader of the Exposome Project for Health and Occupational Research (EHPOR) mega-cohort Work Package working towards large-scale pooling of 40 European cohorts with data on occupational exposures to provide new evidence of the impact of occupational exposures on the risk of major non-communicable diseases, through both systematic and agnostic analyses across the life-course.

In addition to her primary appointment at ISGlobal, she is also a Visiting Scientist at International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). In 2016, she was Vice-Chair of the 25th Epidemiology in Occupational Health Conference (EPICOH) Conference in Barcelona, Spain.  She is also elected as Secretary-Treasurer of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE).

She is the author of over a hundred publications and recently received the prestigious Ramón y Cajal grant in Spain in recognition of her work. 

EPICOH’s main function is to promote communication among epidemiologists, industrial hygienists, and other occupational scientists worldwide. It provides a forum for discussion, critical reviews, collaborations, and education on issues related to occupational exposures and their effects on human health.

“I am honoured to be the inaugural recipient of the EPICOH Mid-Career Award and hope to build closer linkages between occupational and environmental epidemiology”, says Turner.  

The prize will be awarded in the course of the 28^th International Symposium on Epidemiology in Occupational Health, an online event that will take place between 25 and 28 October. On 27 October at 4:00 p.m. CEST, Turner will deliver her keynote talk entitled International Collaboration in Occupational Epidemiology for Global Impact (registration here).