London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

About the prize

​Each year the AMR Centre awards prestigious prizes for antimicrobial-related research publications to LSHTM staff and PhD students. The papers are judged by a panel from our management committee, with criteria focused on the applicant’s authorship role, scientific excellence and impact in the field of AMR.

​With such a variety of work at LSHTM on the topic of AMR, we are delighted to host this prize and celebrate this year’s winners.   ​

Speakers

Bern-Thomas Nyang’wa – Student Prize Winner 

Bern-Thomas Nyang'wa, MD, MPH, is a British-Malawian Medical Director of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and Chief Investigator of TB-PRACTECAL, a phase II-III MDR-TB clinical trial pivotal in the change of WHO 2022 guidelines for treatment of rifampicin resistant tuberculosis (RR-TB). Bern's clinical, programmatic and research work in the past decade has focused on drug resistant TB treatment. His current research work includes population pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of anti-TB drugs, exploring use of volumetric absorptive microsampling techniques for measuring anti-TB drug levels and using small hair samples to quantify cumulative anti-TB drug exposure.  

He won the Student Prize for a publication entitled: "A 24-Week, All-Oral Regimen for Rifampin-Resistant Tuberculosis", published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which contributed to global policy change for the standard of care for RR-TB.   

Collins Timire - Student Prize Winner 

Collins Timire is a Zimbabwean Public Health Specialist/Researcher and final year PhD Fogarty Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, focusing on impact of drug resistant TB (DR-TB) on livelihoods of people and their households in Zimbabwe. He also works as a Senior Operational Research Fellow with the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, being seconded to the National TB Control Programme Zimbabwe where he provides research technical expertise.  

Collins was awarded the Student Prize for his paper entitled: “Coverage and effectiveness of conditional cash transfer for people with drug resistant tuberculosis in Zimbabwe: A mixed methods study” published in PLOS Global Public Health. The recommendations from this paper were incorporated in the TB Strategic Plan for Zimbabwe (2021-2025) and the National TB Programme plans, to streamline conditional cash transfer (CCT) procedures to help avert both community transmission of DR-TB and emergence of extremely drug resistant TB strains (XDR-TB). 

Khalid Beshir – Staff Prize Winner 

Dr Khalid Beshir is an Assistant Professor of genomic epidemiology, specialising in malaria drug resistance and diagnostics. Dr Beshir’s current research focuses on understanding molecular mechanisms of antimalarial and diagnostic resistance to inform public health policy. Dr Beshir leads research on the emergence and spread of Plasmodium falciparum variants and developed a rapid molecular tool which is supporting surveillance efforts globally. 

Dr Beshir was awarded the Staff Prize for his paper entitled: “Prevalence of Plasmodium falciparum haplotypes associated with resistance to sulfadoxine–pyrimethamine and amodiaquine before and after upscaling of seasonal malaria chemoprevention in seven African countries: a genomic surveillance study”, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, showing that sulfadoxine–pyrimethamine and amodiaquine can be used as seasonal chemoprevention without high risk of emergence of resistance genetic markers.