Tiara Putri S.Si., M.Sc., a doctoral student from the Faculty of Biology, UGM, was announced as one of the winners of the Bayer Foundation Fellowship Award 2022. Bayer Foundation is a non-profit organization which supports and provides international exchange opportunities for brilliant young researchers all over the world who are working in the field of science. They provide 3 specific fellowships for the following categories: Otto Bayer – fellowships for drug discovery sciences, Jeff Schell – fellowships for agricultural sciences and Carl Duisburg – fellowships for medical sciences. This year, they have selected 41 young people for this unique experience and Tiara received the Otto Bayer – fellowship in the field of Drug Discovery.
As a follow up of this award, she will undertake part of her doctoral research at Universität Greifswald, Germany to compliment her current scientific studies in a Double Degree scheme. The topic of her research is about pneumococcal co-infection in COVID-19 infected children. During her doctoral study, Tiara is supervised by Prof. Dr. Budi Setiadi Daryono, M.Agr.Sc. (Dean of the Faculty of Biology, UGM) and Prof. Dr. rer. Nat. Sven Hammerschmidt (Head of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Infection Biology, Universität Greifswald).
Tiara was a former Bachelor and Master student at the Faculty of Biology, UGM and graduated with Cum Laude at both degrees. Her research topic was motivated by the fact that evidence on bacterial pneumonia in COVID-19 is still limited and diagnosis remains a challenge, as both diseases are associated with a similar clinical presentation and high inflammatory markers. As of August 28, 2021, there have been over 214,468,601 confirmed cases according to WHO and over 4,470,969 deaths reported nationwide. In spite of interventions to limit its spread, data regarding the epidemiologic characteristics and clinical features of infected children are very few. Therefore, a collaboration with the Department of Molecular Genetics and Infection Biology at the Universität Greifswald will be conducted to explore deeper insights into the mechanisms of bacterial-viral co-infection using a K18-hACE2 mouse model.
“I do hope that my research on COVID-19 in children could provide long term information related to this pandemic situation. I’m sure that there are still many new and exciting discoveries waiting to be found and of beneficial support for our children and their future. And for certain, I want to be a part of the next discovery,” told Tiara on 12/8/22.
