Earlier this summer, we invited medical students from across the United Kingdom and Ireland to apply for positions on the STARSurg Committee. We received 79 high quality applications, all of which were tripled marked by committee members, with shortlisted candidates being invited for interview.
STARSurg is now delighted to welcome four new medical students onto our committee. We look forward to working with our new members to continue delivering our projects within collaborative research and education.
STARSurg has been a student-led initiative, with 53% of the steering committee at present being students. Over the 9 years since the collaborative was founded, we have had 52 committee members which have represented 24 medical schools across the UK and Ireland. Therefore, it is fair to say that we are a truly national group! 8 (53.3%) of our committee members are currently students, representing 7 medical schools from across the UK and Ireland (Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Exeter, Imperial, UCL, UCD). This broad range of representation is key to achieving our goals as a committee.
Every year, we receive many applications from excellent candidates who we are unfortunately unable to offer committee positions. If you were unsuccessful this year, we would like to thank you again for your interest in STARSurg and for taking the time to apply. When considering applications, among other qualities, we look favourably upon previous involvement in STARSurg’s activities. All of our new committee members were previously involved in STARSurg, either as regional leads and/or as study collaborators. While the majority of the current committee have been recruited following experience as a regional lead (median involvement of 12 months, range: 5 – 32 months), there have been 6 members who were recruited directly from being a collaborator (median involvement of 11 months, range: 4 – 18 months).
We would therefore encourage anyone interested in joining the STARSurg Committee in the future to apply for the regional lead position which recently opened at their medical school, or to remain active and involved as a collaborator in our future projects.
Louise Ko
3rd Year Medical Student at UCD
Yousif Aldabbagh
6th Year Medical Student at UCL
Jingjing Wang
4th Year Medical Student at University of Edinburgh
Moritz Steinreucke
4th Year Medical Student at Cambridge University
