ISH awards Collaboration Scholarships worth $5,000 to two ISH members

23 January 2025: Two early career investigators have been awarded ISH scholarships worth $5,000 to develop international collaborations which began at the 2024 ISH Scientific Meeting.

For the Collaboration Exchange Scholarships – launched by the ISH Capacity Building Network (CBN) – both awardees will be hosted by more established researchers who will support joint activities in 2025.

The scholarships were launched to give early to mid-career investigators support to continue collaborations initiated at ISH meetings, which they may not otherwise have the resources to pursue.

The ISH awardees

Arinola Akinnibosun, awarded a PhD in 2024 by Federation University, Australia, has conducted work in genomics, with her research including work on telomere therapy for chronic kidney disease. 

She will be hosted for three weeks this year by Prof Ruan Kruger at the North-West University, South Africa. Ruan is President of the Childhood Hypertension Consortium of South Africa (CHCSA). Arinola will contribute to the CHCSA’s national blood pressure screening project and genomics research of the childhood projects in the Hypertension in Africa Research Team. She will expand collaboration between groups in the study of childhood hypertension and will help to advance genomics initiatives targeting chronic health issues in African communities.

Caroline Cristina Pinto Souza has a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences. She is a PhD student in Biotechnology at the Institute of Biosciences of Botucatu, Department of Biophysics and Pharmacology, São Paulo State University, Brazil. Her research focuses on proteomics and the identification of pharmacological therapeutic targets for preeclampsia. 

For the Scholarship, Caroline will be hosted for six weeks in 2025 by Dr. Ana Carolina Palei, Associate Professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, USA. Dr. Palei has extensive research experience investigating mechanisms and therapeutic targets in preeclampsia, and Caroline will collaborate with her to identify proteins that may serve as biomarkers for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention in preeclampsia using a proteomics approach in selected tissues of a well-established rat model of this hypertensive disorder of pregnancy – the Reduced Uterine Perfusion Pressure.

Launch of the scheme

The scheme was initiated by Niamh Chapman, co-Chair of the CBN. She said: “ISH meetings provide a platform for networking and the start of collaborations, but early to mid-career researchers can find it challenging to continue these activities after meetings are over, due to a lack of resources. We wanted to address this problem, through targeted funding for early to mid-career researchers to work with more senior investigators.”

Buna Bhandari and Ching Siew Mooi, members of the ISH Women in Hypertension Research Committee, who also support the CBN, played a key role in administering the scheme.

Vice President of the ISH Hiroshi Itoh was Chair of the review panel for the scholarship, and said: “The competition among applications for these scholarships was exceptionally strong, and the ISH Reviewer Panel faced a challenge in choosing the eventual recipients. The scholarship proposals from the two successful applicants were outstanding, demonstrating excellence across all evaluation criteria. We look forward to seeing the outcomes of both projects.”

George Stergiou, President of the ISH, said: “Congratulations to both awardees. An important mission of the ISH is to help foster collaboration between investigators around the world. These projects are excellent examples of the kind of joint working we want to encourage. It is particularly gratifying to be able to support early and mid-career investigators, and I’d like to thank members of the ISH Capacity Building Network for their work in launching this Collaboration Exchange Scholarship.”