Ahmed joined us earlier this year as part of the Erasmus exchange programme. He has just finished his lab project (finishing with a 1st!) and is returning to Sweden. In the meantime he very kindly agreed to tell us a little bit more about himself, and his future plans.
“I recently completed the bachelor’s programme in Biomedicine at the University of Skövde in Sweden. During my final semester, I decided that I wanted to expand my learning opportunities and applied for an Erasmus+ traineeship in order to undertake an external thesis project. In doing so, I found the opportunity to undertake a project researching the molecular causes of limb girdle muscular dystrophy at St. George’s University of London. During my time at the university, I got the chance to learn about the nature of next generation sequencing and the breadth of research and bioinformatic analysis that goes into identifying causal variants in rare diseases. Now that I have completed my bachelor’s, I’ll be starting the master’s programme in Public Health Sciences at Stockholm University come September!”.
Erasmus+ is a European Union-funded programme which can enable you to spend part of your higher education studies in another European country. Erasmus+ student mobility agreements allow students to conduct a research project in a research group at a different university. They are an excellent opportunity to experience a new scientific environment and widen your scientific network - an important component of career advancement in science and academia.