One of the highlights of the year for both our students and research staff was the 5th Annual Training Day, held on 4 December 2025, at the Royal Geographical Society. As the MRC Centre approaches the end of its funding period, this event provided a valuable opportunity for the Centre community to come together and celebrate the research journeys and achievements of our PhD students and Early Career Researchers (ECRs).

The programme included an overview of Training Programme activities, alongside oral presentations and poster sessions delivered by our current PhD students and ECRs. Building on the success of last year’s panel discussion on mental health, we organised a second panel discussion on a topic selected by our PhD students and ECRs: work–life balance. The session featured a lecture by Paul Seldon, followed by a lively and insightful panel discussion.

Our Keynote Speaker, Seth Flaxman, delivered a stimulating lecture entitled “Statistical Machine Learning and Global Health: the Big Data Paradox, MRP, and Active Learning Sampling Design.”

As in previous years, the Training Day also included a competition recognising excellence in student and ECR presentations. The winners were as follows:

• Best Poster Presentations – Chris Ho, Aksayaa Perinpakumar, Anika Shain
• Best Year 2 Oral Presentation – Phoebe French
• Best Year 3 Oral Presentation – Julia Laskowska
• Second Best Year 3 Oral Presentations – Jiayi (Christina) Liang, Fei Gao, Ella White, Ruben Julius Colindres Zuehlke