STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCE

The IMVACC courses were challenging and truly tested my understanding on a deeper level regarding vaccines and vaccinations. Even with my nursing background, I read articles, obtained information from the IMVACC tutors and worked with my co-hort, online, to learn the history about vaccines as well as how they are developed, designed and promoted through public health initiatives. In our every changing world, where vaccines are met with some speculation, these courses and obtaining my Masters, has truly increased my level of understanding as well as prepare me to educate others in this field.

For fellow students – future ones coming in to IMVACC, please note I am available to talk with students as well as guide them through the thesis process. Please share my name and information with those who might find it helpful to speak with a former IMVACC student.

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After finishing my PhD in fundamental biological sciences, I wanted to shift my career on a domain where I can have a direct impact on public health and preventable diseases. In this sense, International Master in Vaccinology made perfect match with my career prospects and personal development plans. IMVACC is designed by an interdisciplinary approach to vaccine science and brings together components of vaccine immunology, development, manufacturing, public health and more. Learning from the experts of the field and lively discussions with other students made this experience a real privilege. Thanks to the user friendly platforms and support from the course managers, distance learning run smoothly and provided me the flexibility that I needed. I highly recommend this program for those who wants to embark on a career in the vaccine field or deepen their existing knowledge.

The IMVACC experience has really pushed me out of my comfort zone as a clinician. I was working in clinical trials priors to embarking on this IMVACC journey and I never realized how versatile the field of vaccinology truly was until I did this masters. I was inspired to take up this journey after attending a short Vaccinology course in 2019. I felt I needed to go much deeper and understand the different dimensions of vaccinology.

A special thank you to the director of my research unit, Prof Shabir A. Madhi for believing in me and motivating me to start this journey in 2019. To the South African Medical Research Council for funding this scholarship that allowed me to pursue these studies.

To all my mentors and instructors that guided us on this amazing journey of discovery in this extensive field of vaccinology a special word of gratitude. My mentor from Lausanne University, Prof Ivana Knezevic, my supervisor Dr Michelle Groom and co-supervisor Dr Nellie Myburgh who helped me to build a study from conception to implementation and finally to my master’s thesis.

This course gave us the opportunity to meet other students from around the world to discuss different topics related to vaccines and discuss ways to make things better even in low-income settings.

It was interesting to learn about the immunology of both disease and how vaccines work, vaccine manufacturing, clinical trials, and the public health impact of vaccines. The public health block really brought the course together. It makes you appreciate how vital vaccines are to preventing so many infectious diseases that would otherwise kill so many worldwide. It takes teamwork, empowering individuals with skills to be able to create a network of ethically sound and knowledgeable researchers. I would recommend this course for all researchers striving to help their communities to build high quality people centered research networks worldwide.

Joining IMVACC has been an incredible journey for me, with all that has happened in the past two and a half years. I joined IMVACC in January 2020 and recently completed the Master thesis component in June 2022. Being a clinical researcher and investigator on multiple HIV and COVID-19 vaccine trials, the course filled several gaps in my knowledge, particularly around immunology, good manufacturing practice, toxicology and post-marketing surveillance. I had been in the HIV vaccine field for 13 years already when I joined IMVACC and did not anticipate the in-depth knowledge I would gain during the course. We received excellent mentorship throughout the course from experts in the field, while also being able to contribute from our own experiences in our respective fields of work. It was a phenomenal experience to study vaccinology against a backdrop of an ongoing global pandemic, which also gave me the confidence to continue with the critical work I was undertaking with COVID-19 vaccine trials.

Our mentors always ensured that we received the most up to date information on the pandemic and on all aspects of the course. The Master thesis component offered me the opportunity to pursue a topic on HPV, which is an area of research that I had been planning to undertake for some time. This part of the course enabled me to develop my skills to think critically as a researcher. Being part of a group of students from a diverse background further enriched the IMVACC experience for me and I thoroughly enjoyed the weekly online sessions we had which encouraged rich discussion and debate.

Overall, the IMVACC course has been an invaluable experience for me and has strengthened and developed my knowledge on vaccines and vaccine development. It is a course that I highly recommend for early to mid-level investigators in the vaccine field as this will broaden your knowledge substantially and stand you in good stead in your career. I am very grateful to the IMVACC programme and the SAMRC for affording me the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing course!

Gerhardt Boukes is the Chief Scientist for the mRNA Hub at Afrigen Biologics (Pty) Ltd, Cape Town, South Africa.  Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines was awarded the global mRNA Hub for Technology Transfer and Training by the WHO.  Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines is establishing the mRNA vaccine platform, building a pilot scale GMP vaccine facility and developing Africa’s first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.  mRNA technology will be used to develop mRNA vaccines for other infectious vaccines affecting low- and middle-income countries.

Gerhardt joined the IMVACC programme in 2020 and successfully defended his thesis entitled “Developing novel mucosal adjuvant formulations using chitosan as mucoadhesive for human and/or animal vaccines” on 05 July 2022.

The IMVACC programme gave me a broad overview of immunology, infectious bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases, vaccine development, vaccine manufacturing, quality control and -assurance, and regulatory aspects associated with vaccines.  Knowledge gained during the IMVACC programme is applicable to my current position and transferrable to the rest of the R&D and production teams at Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines.

This course started off with a face-to-face meeting at the University of Lausanne. It was a great opportunity for us to meet the faculty at Lausanne as well as students from other countries. The F2F meeting provided a clear guidance on how to access and utilize the Moodle learning platform which was user-friendly.

The IMVACC course is self-directed, intense, but rigorous. The course activities involved reading and answering questions from the annotated articles, interactive and meaningful discussions every fortnight and timed online exams at the end of every module. I appreciated the opportunity to access the IMVACC online library. This provided a wide range of literature from high impact journals. I had to learn how to juggle between my young family, a full-time job, and my studies.

As a pharmacist and a patient safety expert, I broadened my knowledge on research and public health. I also gained in-depth knowledge in Vaccine development, vaccine manufacturing, quality control and quality assurance. I am confident that the set of skills and knowledge acquired from the IMVACC program will go a long way to impact lives in my country, Kenya, through active participation and provision of technical support in vaccine implementation initiatives.

My appreciation goes to the University of Lausanne EDCTP, and KEMRI, for providing the opening for this invaluable learning experience. Special thanks to the tutors: Prof. Jean Pierre Kraehenbuhl, Prof. Claude Meric, and Prof. Fabio Candotti for their availability every time I reached out, patience and the ‘push’ that encouraged us to keep the momentum. I’m also immensely grateful to my thesis director, Dr. Ombeva O. Malande for his guidance through my research work.

The IMVACC course brilliantly provides a holistic overview of the field of vaccinology relative to human diseases. It expanded my understanding of HIV vaccine research and helped me to clearly define my focus in the field of HIV vaccine science going forward.

The whole program was an invaluable experience which broadened my knowledge in vaccinology: From the discovery of the first primitive vaccine strategy against smallpox to the most advanced and challenging vaccination strategies against the fast genetically drifting influenza viruses; and From the basic science of vaccinology to the manufacturing processes, public health and implementation and measurement of effectiveness and impact.

The broad range but detailed examples of vaccine research against different diseases was invaluable for someone who only knew about HIV. The challenging ongoing research to find a vaccine against diseases such as HIV, coronaviruses and Ebola was extremely fascinating and stimulating. The module on project management was a bonus and certainly useful for all other aspects of work life.

Doing the intensive but rewarding coursework in 2019, unknowingly prepared us to have a better understanding of the science of coronaviruses during unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. Particularly an understanding of lessons learned from previous MERS and SARS outbreaks for vaccine development.

Being exposed to a different and high-level style of teaching and learning as well as interacting with professionals from different parts of the world and from different professional backgrounds was highly rewarding in many ways.

Besides stepping foot on the corridors of the Swiss Vaccine Institute, it has been a privilege to access a wide range of literature from high impact journals through the university of Lausanne. Thank you!

The Master of Advanced Studies in Vaccinology (IMVACC) was a course I wanted to take, having been involved in basic science to clinical trial implementation. In my two years at Cochrane South Africa, South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), working on vaccine implementation research and Clinical Trial Registry portfolios, IMVACC has been a booster to my career trajectory.  All thanks to the Research Capacity Development (RCD) Unit of the SAMRC, who provided an opportunity by offering a bursary to be part of the 2019 IMVACC course at the Université de Lausanne.  This has been my quest to understand the multifaced area of research, from basic science to implementation science.

As excited as I was, the first year was intense, with loads of course content to grasp while holding full-time employment. I quickly had to develop a strategy for managing all my tasks, thanks to the support from the tutors, Dr Claude Méric, Prof Jean-Pierre Kraehenbuhl and my mentor Prof Charles Wiysonge. Moreover, the great thing about the IMVACC course is that it is well thought through to consider that prospective students are working full-time, and the availability of project management tools provided as one of the modules in the programme. Besides implementing a plan, I dedicated the first 2 hours of my day to study and used my evenings to get through tasks I had planned to achieve on a specific date. I also sacrificed my weekends to get through the course content for the modules.

I was fortunate to have met the 2018 IMVACC cohort, who shared tips on how to get through the IMVACC. During the first meeting in Lausanne, I had an idea about the research project which was a project I was involved in. This has made it easy to execute the research task immediately after completing the modules. The great thing about the research task is that one can choose to take any research, of course, after the committee vets it, that is related to vaccinology. I am interested in vaccine implementation research, where I work on several research projects that seek to understand barriers and facilitators to low childhood vaccination updates in Africa.

In summary, having completed the IMVACC course, I have gained a lot of experience in this complex area of research. I have been awarded further opportunities to attend the prestigious ADVAC (Advanced Course of Vaccinology). Over and above, IMVACC opened a lot of options that complement my other work, which is to conduct systematic reviews and evidence-informed decision making (EIDM), where I am part of the team that develops training modules for the Africa National Advisory Group on Immunisation (NAGI) in collaboration with The Vaccines for Africa Initiative (VACFA) and have been involved in collating vaccine evidence in response to COVID-19 pandemic where I serve on the Ministerial Advisory Group on vaccines workstream 1. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a great opportunity to practice what IMVACC has taught us.

A note to others considering taking the course; I would recommend IMVACC and advise prospective students to dedicate time to the course to get the full benefits IMVACC.

Completing IMVACC has been a challenging but rewarding journey. In addition to the more usual challenges of trying to achieve a work-life balance with post-graduate study, there was a COVID-19 pandemic and rolling electricity power blackouts in my country to navigate. In spite of the aforementioned curve balls, undertaking IMVACC has been worthwhile. The theory I learned, and the thesis have both given me the confidence to work in the field of Vaccinology. The support and guidance of the faculty, my thesis supervisors, my sponsor, and my loved ones have been invaluable in my completing my studies.

IMVACC is a great program and I look forward to the opportunities and possibilities that lie ahead as a result of having completed it.