Jessie Khaki, a Ph.D. Student in Statistics and Epidemiology at Lancaster University, has been awarded a highly competitive 2023-24 Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future (SFFF) fellowship. The fellowship will fund Jessie’s tuition fees, stipend, and other research-related costs in the fourth year of her Ph.D. The fellowship will also allow her to interact and collaborate with a global community of current and previous fellows. In addition to the support provided to fellows over the duration of their studies, the Schlumberger Foundation also supports its fellows in carrying out outreach programs for adolescent girls and young women in their home countries after their awards.

Jessie’s academic career recently got another boost with the award of a small Directorate-General for Development Cooperation (DGD) grant by the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) Antwerp in Belgium. The DGD grant will allow her to participate in a 3-month course on how to write a manuscript on maternal and child health using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data. The grant will also support Jessie to attend an in-person workshop at Antwerp.

Jessie joined MLW in 2018 as a pre-doctoral intern, where she worked in the Statistical Support Unit and Salmonella and Enterics group and was supervised by Dr Marc Henrion and Professor Melita Gordon. For part of her PhD, Jessie is using some data from the Salmonella group, and she is immensely grateful to her internship supervisors as well as MLW and KUHES supervisors for their immeasurable support in her academic career. The high-quality mentorship and training that she received from both KUHES and MLW helped prepare and position her well for opportunities such as the DGD scholarship and the Schlumberger FFF Fellowship.

Soar Higher, Jessie!