ISGlobal Researcher Elisa López Receives Extraordinary Doctorate Award from the University of Barcelona

Elisa López Varela has been awarded an Extraordinary Doctorate Award by the University of Barcelona (UB) for her doctoral thesis, “Epidemiología de la tuberculosis en la población infantil de Manhiça, Mozambique” (“Paediatric tuberculosis epidemiology in Manhiça, Mozambique”), which she defended at the UB Faculty of Medicine on 7 October 2016. Dr. López Varela received the award yesterday, 9 April 2019, in the Paranymph Hall on the historic UB campus. The award ceremony was chaired by Dr. Joan Elias, Rector of the University of Barcelona.

Dr. López Varela conducted her doctoral research at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and the Manhiça Health Research Centre (CISM). Her research focused on the epidemiology of tuberculosis in children in southern Mozambique, where she lived for three years while carrying out her field work. Her objective was to improve epidemiological estimates of paediatric tuberculosis and to characterise the disease from multiple perspectives with the aim of overcoming critical barriers to diagnosis. Dr. López Varela’s thesis consists of seven articles published in international journals, including high-impact health publications such as The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

Elisa López Varela is a researcher and physician specialised in infectious diseases at ISGlobal. She studied medicine at the Autonomous University of Madrid (2004) and completed her paediatric residency in the same city (2010). She completed a Master of Public Health at Harvard University in Boston (2007) before earning a PhD in Medicine at the University of Barcelona (2016). She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Desmond Tutu TB Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, thanks to a postdoctoral grant from the Ramón Areces Foundation and the Spanish Association of Paediatrics.