Case Study - Blanchard
Biological science alumni Laurine Blanchard’s came to Coventry from France to begin a successful career at Coventry University. Since graduating in 2007 she’s not been able to stay out of the lab, studying up to PhD level, teaching, volunteering for Doctors without Borders and leading medical and research missions, and running clinical trials in Lyon, France.
Laurine gives us an insight in to what a career as a clinical scientist is really like.
How did studying at Coventry University help further your career?
I was attracted to Coventry University by the opportunities the Erasmus scheme offered of studying in England through the partnership with Université Lyon 1.
My knowledge of the English language greatly improved and the teaching at Coventry helped me gain a sense of autonomy at work.
Coventry is a great university that takes care of foreign students and I felt well integrated into the student community. This was a rich and great experience, humanly.
Where has your career taken you since graduating?
I am currently a Clinical Scientist at bioMérieux in Lyon, France and serve public health by fighting against antibiotic resistance. My role is to set-up and design, follow and monitor, coordinate and organise clinical trials externally and internally to establish the performances of new in vitro diagnostic solutions in microbiology. This means testing human samples or bacteria isolated from contaminated samples such as blood or other biological fluids on new devices allowing their detection, identification and/ or resistance to antibiotics.
Before this I completed my PhD in microbial ecology in 2013 and have also worked for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) = Doctors without borders. Between 2014 and 2015 I went to Mali and Liberia to help medical and humanitarian crisis situations, including the Ebola epidemic, working as a biologist and a lead laboratory scientist in biosafety and diagnosis leading labs in paediatric units.
