GLIOTRAIN consortium members take part in PPI events in early 2019

PPI is a crucial aspect of the GLIOTRAIN outreach strategy and all PIs and ESRs are encouraged to take as many opportunities as possible to get involved in PPI events, schools visits, fundraisers and any other events that help to engage with the wider public and patient communities.

In Feb 2019, Yahaya Yabo and Dr Anna Golebiewska (LIH) hosted a number of high school students from the local area who were on a short internship to the lab. They conducted a lab tour and demonstrated immunofluorescence technique to the students. In March 2019 Dr Golebiewska also participated in the 'Cancer research lab' event organised for the general public within the 'Relais pour la vie' event.

GLIOTRAIN has featured twice in full-length articles in the IBTA's annually published "Brain Tumour" magazine. This has been key in terms of patient engagement, scientist engagement and clinician engagement with the project: the magazine (published annually, approximately 14,000 copies) is sent for free to recipients in 111 countries and widely distributed at international neuro-oncology and cancer conferences. In 2018, an introduction to the project was published with information about the project and PhD training. A glossary was included to explain scientific terminology. The second full-length feature article on GLIOTRAIN (right) was published in May 2019. In this article, each of the GLIOTRAIN Students wrote a short piece describing their project, with the final article being compiled by the Project Manager. Importantly, contributing to this article was a key area of training for the GLIOTRAIN students as the article was written at an appropriate level for a non-scientific audience who have some understanding and engagement / interest in the topic. A vocabulary dictionary was again provided at the end of the article where students had to describe unavoidably scientific language in a simple way - assisting the readers and developing their understanding of the project as a whole.

In March 2019, Mr Ayoub Lasri (RCSI) took part in an event arranged by the Embassy of France in Ireland, "My Thesis in 3 minutes in French". The event was organised as part of the Francophonie Festival. Ayoub presented his PhD project, "Multi-scale mathematical modelling of non-Darwinian dynamics in therapy-induced drug resistance in GBM" at the event which took place at RCSI. Ayoub was awarded the Outreach Prize for his presentation. Congratulations to Ayoub for winning the Best outreach prize for his presentation!