ARC NWC PhD student Emily Wharton was successful in receiving the Pandemic Institute Student Excellence Award 2023.  

Emily (supervised by Prof. Costis Maganaris, Dr Tom O’Brien, Dr Rich Foster and Dr Clarissa Giebel) is a PhD student for the Institute for Health Research (IHR) at Liverpool John Moores University and is funded by ARC NWC.

The Pandemic Institute’s mission is to protect the world from emerging infections and future pandemic threats. Launched in 2021, the Institute is formed of seven founding partners: The University of Liverpool (Host organisation), Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool City Council, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, Liverpool University Hospital Foundation Trust, and Knowledge Quarter Liverpool. The Pandemic Institute provides comprehensive end-to-end capabilities to accelerate the response to emerging infections and future pandemic threats, producing high-impact outputs applicable to individuals, businesses, and governments, locally nationally and internationally.

The Pandemic Institute collaborated with DAM Health to support the next generation of scientific, medical and humanistic students in Liverpool with global ambitions. The Student Excellence Awards 2023 aim’s to help boost the career development opportunities of each winner, enabling them to attend international conferences or take up world-leading training and development opportunities.

The Student’s Excellence Award application was considered on these questions: How have you demonstrated excellence in your work to date? Summarise your PhD project and the importance of your project? How you will benefit from this award? How your project reduces economic shock through rapid policy implementation (the Pandemic Institute activity model priorities - Recover)? 

Emily’s application and her research: “The effect of COVID-19 lockdown on home stair falls in older adults” was viewed to be excellent, demonstrated personal/professional dedication as well as academically and was awarded the Pandemic Institute Student Excellence Award 2023, receiving a total of £3,500 for the award. Emily presented her PhD research and received her award at the annual ceremony of the Pandemic Institute held at Liverpool Medical Institution & Conference Centre on Tuesday 7th February 2023.

Emily said: “I’m incredibly honoured to have received this award and that my hard work has paid off. Not only on a complex research project which seeks to tackle an important issue with socio-economic consequences but in my work within equity, diversity, inclusivity, and respect. I will be using the grant to travel to the next International Society Posture and Gait Research (ISPGR) in Australia. This will be a great platform to share my work and potentially create an overseas impact as “stair fall pandemics” are not localised to the UK alone. I’m very excited to network and gain further useful insights or alternate ideas from people I would not usually have access to. I feel very privileged to have won this award and to be able to share my research and make an impact at my very first international conference.

Additionally, the ceremony provided a fantastic opportunity for me to articulate my passion for policy implementation and through the event, I was able to make valuable connections that will aid in furthering my experience in this field.”