For the past three years, UCLA students have won awards in the annual poster contest organized by the APRU Global Health Program.

UCLA International Institute, August 9, 2018 — The Global Health Program of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) holds an annual poster competition open to undergraduate and graduate students of its member universities. Posters can be on any global health topic, but must represent original research. Winning entries are presented at the annual APRU Global Health Conference, to be held this year at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, October 28–30.

UCLA is a founding member of APRU, which was established in 1997. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block currently serves as chairman of the organization’s Steering Committee and Vice Provost Cindy Fan, as co-chair of the APRU International Policy Advisory Committee.

Since 2016, UCLA students have consistently won top prizes in APRU's global health poster contest. Jessa Culver (UCLA 2017) — an international development studies major and global health minor at the UCLA International Institute — won second place in the 2016 undergraduate category with a poster on a collaborative intervention that addressed the HIV/AIDS crisis in Haiti. In 2017, three undergraduates won third prize in the same category with a poster on sustainable health and social services for Maclovio Rojas, Mexico: Haven Nisly, Ashen Parikh and Audrey Nguyen.

Both undergraduate and graduate UCLA students placed in the 2018 poster contest. Five Bruins won third prize in the undergraduate contest: Megan Ren (molecular, cell, and developmental biology major; global health minor), Jason Zhang (neuroscience major), Rishi Makkar (biochemistry major), Nicolas Gonzalez (physiological science major) and Mili Patel (human biology and society major; public health minor).

And three UCLA graduate students won third prize in the 2018 graduate category: Sarah Lawrence (medical student, David Geffen School of Medicine), Betty Nguyen (medical student, UC Riverside School of Medicine; UCLA 2017); and Jacqueline Pei (ULCA 2018).

Details of the posters submitted by these two groups of students will soon be posted on the 2018 annual conference website of the Global Health Program.

This article was first published on August 9, 2018, and corrected on September 27, 2018.

Published: Thursday, August 9, 2018