Three female medical students from Chulalongkorn and Mahidol universities will conduct research abroad for one year, thanks to the 1st Prince Mahidol Award Youth Program 2009.
The 24-year-old Juthaporn will use her scholarship to study stem cell technology at Kobe province, right after her graduation this April. She said she wanted to work with the famous female scientist Masayo Takahashi who led the research team at Japan's Centre for Developmental Biology (CDB), experimenting on culturing stem cells and inducing them into retinas at the cell level and at the lab animal level.
Kanokwarun, who was credited for her research project for unintended pregnancy among youngsters, said she was inspired by working trips upcountry. She had found many high school-aged women were pregnant, 50 per cent of them unintended, leading to many problems. Kanokwarun will study this issue with the World Health Organisation, hoping to help lower the teenagers' unintended pregnancy rate in future.
Pennapa said she would study sexual health services and Aids patient care at developed countries like the United States, with the United Nations' working group UNAIDS, and in the African country of Kenya, which had managed to lower its HIV/Aids rate despite limitations.
