From penguins in Chile to monkeys in Costa Rica: How an Early Career Grant turned my passion for penguins into a scientific career 

Clara Wiederkehr Bruno, RSTMH/JCPET Early Career Grant 2022 Awardee, explains in this blog how receiving an RSTMH Early Career Grant opened the way for the start of her research career. 

I remember the day I received the guidelines for my master's thesis. They recommended choosing a research topic we were passionate about since we would be dedicating an entire year to it. At that moment, I thought of something that seemed almost impossible but had always been my dream: studying wildlife, especially penguins, my favourite animal. I never imagined that not only would it come true, but it would also mark the beginning of an entire career that I’m deeply passionate about. 

How it all began 

It was a rainy afternoon in Madrid. From the window of the clinic where I worked, I saw birds settling into a tree to sleep, and I imagined what it would be like to be on the other side of the world, studying birds completely different from those I was used to see in Spain. I decided to search online and found the contact information for some professors at the University of Chile who had published an article about the need for deeper research on infectious diseases in penguins. Both topics fascinated me, so I sent them an email—what did I have to lose? 

They kindly opened the university’s doors to me and offered full collaboration for whatever study I wanted to conduct. Unfortunately, I needed to fully fund the project myself. That’s when my master’s advisor suggested to apply for the Early Career Grant from RSTMH. 

How did the research develop? 

I cannot describe the excitement I felt when I was awarded the grant and it opened the way for what would become the start of my research career. That same year, I was on a plane to Chile, where I spent three months isolating Salmonella and determining its antibiotic resistance in Humboldt penguins and coastal birds from the central coast. 

As my Salmonella research deepened, I attended a lecture by the person who would later become my PhD advisor. Afterward, I told him about the project we were working on. Since the initial results were promising (we were finding high resistance in the isolated Salmonella strains), he proposed a collaboration with the university where I studied my degree, in Madrid. There, they had more advanced equipment that would even allow us to sequence the isolated strains. 

How the research impacted my academic career 

The day I went to Madrid to discuss the sequencing results, he asked me: "Why are you doing all this?" I replied that I was doing it simply because I found it interesting. That’s when he offered me a PhD position in his lab. Of course, I accepted—but on one condition: I wanted to keep studying antibiotic resistance in wildlife in other countries. So, I decided to go to Costa Rica, a country I had visited before and whose biodiversity had captivated me. 

Where am I now? 

Last year, I carried out a similar project, this time focusing on howler monkeys in Costa Rica. I also published the penguin research findings as the first author, presented them at a seminar in Spain and an international conference in Sydney, Australia, via a poster. 

Currently, I’m expanding the same project to include all species that come through the rescue centre where I work in Costa Rica. I present my findings at national conferences and continue applying to international ones. At the Sydney conference, an opportunity arose to continue this project in collaboration with various universities across the Americas, aiming to conduct a similar but large-scale study. 

Why these grants matter 

Just three years ago, I was dreaming from a clinic in Madrid about traveling the world to study wildlife. Today, that’s my reality and my career. All of this has been possible thanks to the RSTMH grant, and I’m endlessly grateful for the doors it opened for me. 

The world of research needs passionate people – but those people also need support to turn their ideas and projects into reality. If you feel that calling, I encourage you to pursue it with all your might. You can start by simply applying for the grant—you never know where it might take you!