Dr Matt Cairns
Research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Dr Matt Cairns studies the best ways to protect children from malaria in developing countries. He was appointed in his current role after completing an MRC PhD studentship.
Dr Matt Cairns researches the use of intermittent preventive treatment (IPT) strategies, in which people are given antimalarial drugs at intervals to treat current infections and prevent new ones. “Having done an MRC-funded MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), I knew I wanted a career in malaria research. Looking at the studentships available at LSHTM, many were quite specific about the research involved. But the MRC-funded PhD studentships were awarded according to the student, not the project, which meant that I got a lot more choice regarding my project, supervisor and collaborations.
“It was great to have that freedom so early in my research career. I worked with several different groups on malaria prevention studies, travelled to international conferences and did further training in statistical methods. Not only did my research involve epidemiological analysis and mathematical modelling, I was also the statistician for a clinical trial of IPT and I chose to do some teaching too.
“Since completing my PhD, I have been appointed as a Research Fellow at LSHTM and am continuing some of the work from my PhD in collaboration with the World Health Organization. It’s incredibly rewarding to know that my research could have a direct impact on public health.”
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Published December 2010