Ciência Viva 2023: “Helminths around us! Come and find the helminths near you!”

Between the 10th and 14^th July 2023, the GHTM/IHMT/NOVA hosted the “Ciência Viva – Ocupação Científica de Jovens nas Férias 2023” internship “Helminths around us! Come and find the helminths near you!”, coordinated by Pedro Ferreira.

Aimed to “acquire knowledge about helminths that spend part of their lives in the soil (STH – Soil Transmitted Helminths) and how some can cause disease in humans, as well as their importance in Public Health”, and “to alert students to how environmental conditions and human behavior can lead to STH dispersion”, three high school students had the opportunity to developed fieldwork collecting soil and sand samples from potential geohelminth habitats in the IHMT’s gardens. “Helminths (eggs or larvae) were detected and morphologically identified in the lab, and the participants also learned how to maintain the life cycle of some helminth parasites in the laboratory”.

The participants had also the opportunity to learn how to plan and develop an STH related research project, and, as in any research work, participants gave an oral presentation of their results.

Manuela Calado, Isabel Maurício and Pedro Ferreira, VBD-GHTM Researcher members, accompanied these students.

For Pedro Ferreira, “this internship has been stimulating near 10-12 students towards science and scientific research since 2013, and it has proven to be a factor in choosing their graduation course. The motivation and commitment by the participants, as well as their positive feedback, are the main reasons for carrying out this internship over these 10 years”, concluded the VBD-GHTM Researcher.

Learn more about the GHTM internships 2023 here:

GHTM researchers promoted summer interships in the scope of the “Ciência Viva no Laboratório 2023”

Infectious Diseases and their vectors: come research and find out more about this relationship!

Summer Internships Ciência Viva 2023: high school students were scientists in the field of malaria for one week

Ciência Viva 2023: “PSI Parasite Scene Investigation – Be a Researcher for a week”

«Ciência Viva» is the branded name of the Portuguese National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture, meaning «Live Science».