October 2026: The Future Medicine PhD Fellowships began this month with four students working on interdisciplinary projects at the forefront of modern medicine. From L-R: Thomas Hartwell, Anja Dickerson, Nadiya Boyar, Marija Panova-Stojchevska. We are delighted to welcome four students to the University of Edinburgh to begin their PhD Fellowships.The students will explore the role of infectious agents in chronic diseases. These fellowships are fundamentally collaborative, and bring together researchers with different approaches, to answer questions in a transdisciplinary way. About the Fellowships The focus of the Future Medicine programme is on the role of infection in the development of chronic health conditions, with the aim of delivering findings that have disruptive and translational potential. The programme was initiated at a symposium in November 2025, and four students were recruited to start projects in October 2026. The current projects are highly interdisciplinary, and address the role of Herpes simplex virus infection in childhood dementia, links between infection and MASLD liver disease progression, how urinary tract infections drive chronic neurological disease, and the role of circular viral RNAs in the progression of Kaposi Sarcoma. In addition to their research projects, the students have access to training and career development activities through the MRC Precision Medicine Doctoral Training Programme. Students and projects Future Medicine PhD Fellowships full team with philanthropic donor Jonathan Knowles (second row from top, second from left). Nadiya Boyar Project title: Identifying the association between infection and MASLD progression and prognosis.Project supervisors: Wei-Yu Lu (IRR) and Georgia Perona-Wright (SBS)."My project will investigate how infections alter the T cell repertoire during metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) progression. Because MASLD is a major drive of chronic liver disease, this project aims to uncover an immune signature that could help shape immune resetting therapies in the future. I am very excited to get started and to learn how infectious agents contribute to the progression of this chronic disease!" Anja Dickerson Project title: Host-pathogen interactions during urinary tract infection as drivers of chronic neurological disease.Project supervisors: Jing Qiu (INCR), David Gally (Roslin) and Sohan Seth (Informatics)."My project is focused on understanding how urinary tract infections affect brain health. Urinary tract infections can sometimes cause symptoms like confusion and behavioural changes and the occurrence of these symptoms during an infection appears to worsen neurological conditions like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. I aim to study how the body's reaction to the urinary tract infection causes this increased vulnerability to these diseases and hopefully gain more insight into how inflammation can drive neurological conditions. I am especially excited to look more into how we can improve our understanding of brain inflammation by paying attention to what's happening outside the nervous system, in the rest of the body." Thomas Hartwell Project title: Circular RNAs Linking Viral Infection and Mechanotransduction in Kaposi Sarcoma.Project supervisors: Carsten Gram Hansen (IRR), Takanobu Tagawa (SBS) and Ailsa Oswald (IRR)."My name is Thomas and I'll be studying a virus that can cause cancer: Kaposi Sarcoma (the cancer) Herpes Virus (the virus). I will be developing a better close-to-human model of the disease and looking to see how circular RNAs might be involved in pathogenesis. I'm really excited to start learning about this understudied infectious disease, and hopefully uncover new biomarkers or therapeutic targets." Marija Panova-Stojchevska Project title: The role of Herpes simplex virus infection in neuropathology of Sanfilippo disease.Project supervisors: Brian Bigger (IRR) and Anna Williams (IRR)."I love the detail of cell biology: understanding how something works, and what happens when it goes wrong. My PhD will explore whether viral infection can worsen the pathology of Sanfilippo syndrome, a rare genetic condition that causes neurodegeneration in children. I’m particularly interested in whether understanding the inflammatory response could help us find ways to limit that damage. Being able to connect the biology I enjoy with questions that could eventually inform treatment is a large part of what drew me to this project. I’ve had such a warm welcome in Edinburgh, and I’m excited to get properly started." Related links Future Medicine website This article was published on Tuesday 20 October 2026
