Daisy Unsihuay, from the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería de Lima (Peru), is the new student of the REPU(Research Experience for Peruvian Undergraduates) program hosted by School of Pharmacy of the University of Navarra.

This program offers university students the opportunity to have an experience at research in first level laboratories. In this way, it seeks to support the development of Peru's scientific capacity by contributing to the training of its new generations.

Unsihuay, who is in his last year of the degree program course at Chemistry Pura, is doing research at department at Microbiology and Parasitology under the guidance of Prof. Carlos Gamazo. During her three-month stay she is collaborating, together with Dr. Ana Camacho, in the project to manufacture a vaccine against Shigella: "the vaccine has already been tested in mice, now we are in the optimization stage, we want to have a higher yield of the extract and a better quality", says the student.

Support for the research international

The University of Navarra collaborates for the second consecutive year in the REPU program, being one of the six participating centers along with Yale University, Vanderbilt University, Texas A&M University, Purdue University and the Canadian McMaster University. This partnership is possible thanks to Myra Flores, a doctoral student at the University of Navarra, who acts as contact REPU in Spain.

Being part of this program "is very demanding," says Unsihuay. In addition to collaborating in a project of research, "on weekends we participate in a Journal Club where we present our work work. Once a month we also have a Research in Progress, to comment on how our project is progressing. All these meetings are via web and in English, since each participant in the program is located in different parts of the world".

In mid-March all students in the program will present their work at the REPU Seminar to be held at Yale University.