Nafiza Mamun
My name is Nafiza Mamun. I studied MSc Clinical Pharmacology at King’s and currently I am the elected Vice President Postgraduate at King’s College London Students’ Union for the year. Usually, students decide to join a postgraduate course to focus on a specific aspect of their career, like myself but just like life, anything can change at any moment. That moment for me was when I decided to represent the postgraduate students at King’s and create a better community for postgraduate students than where I studied.
My course helped me learn further about the development of medicinal drugs from start to end in a practical level. It also opened my eyes about the different requirement masters’ students have from undergrads, which kicked me in to wanting to do something for us. If I had to pick a module, I would definitely say it’s preclinical sciences, where we were asked to be creative and develop a packaging for a drug, which challenged me to be creative, as it isn’t something that is expected from a life sciences course.
Another module that is really helpful is practical clinical pharmacology, where we were required to do a week of placement in a real life ongoing clinical trial, which provided us with the real context rather than the theory we learn in books and journals to see what I am expected to join after representing the students. The biggest learning curve was during my research project on non-invasive biomarker sampling in the form of liquid biopsy for clinical trial success. My research project highly aided in my understanding deeply about one of the preliminary reasons clinical trials do not succeed, apart from lack of efficacy, which helps me understand the methods that could be developed to increase clinical trial success.
All my lecturers were really inspiring and I have been able to learn a lot from their own experience in the pharmaceutical industry for the future and to gain a different perspective from the academics’ side on their perception of students, which helped me a lot during my role at KCLSU. Not only that, they have provided us with additional support outside of lectures, whether it was academic or nonacademic related matters, creating a friendly environment between us students and the lecturers. Overall, I had a lovely time during my course thanks to all my lecturers, especially Dr. Stuart Jones and all my colleagues.