Designed to support a new generation of public health leaders, the Fellowships equip researchers with a distinctive combination of scientific, leadership and entrepreneurial skills centred on what Lady Mireille calls the "3Ms" of public health leadership: Money, Management and Medicine. 

Their vision recognised that addressing today's global health challenges requires more than scientific excellence. Researchers also need the leadership, strategic and entrepreneurial skills to turn ideas into real-world impact. Over the past decade, the Fellowship has helped researchers apply these principles across careers spanning research, entrepreneurship, policy and public health leadership. 

For Dr Andres Roman-Urrestarazu, one of the programme's inaugural Fellows, the experience was transformative: "The Lady Mireille & Sir Dennis Gillings Global Public Health Fellowship gave me the space and mentorship to grow as both a researcher and a leader and helped me understand how to shape ideas into work that can influence policy and practice."

After completing the Fellowship, Andres earned an Executive MBA at Cambridge Judge Business School, founded his own company and built a career spanning psychiatry, international health and public policy. Today, he holds positions at Maastricht University and the University of Cambridge, with affiliations at LSE Health and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy. 

Dr Michelle K. Morters also benefited from the programme's combination of scientific and entrepreneurial training. Alongside specialist research training and international collaborations, she completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship at Cambridge Judge Business School, where she developed a social enterprise proposal for an impoverished settlement in South Africa. 

Reflecting on the experience, she says: "The programme in business and entrepreneurship was particularly beneficial for developing key leadership skills in the context of health systems." 

Most recently, the Fellowship supported Dr Jingwen Fan, whose research at Institut Pasteur explored why individuals respond differently to infectious diseases and treatment. Her work has contributed to efforts to identify tuberculosis biomarkers that could support diagnosis, treatment monitoring and vaccine evaluation. 

"The Gillings Fellowship has enabled me to pursue these very interdisciplinary and translational research ambitions." 

She has since secured further funding to continue her research at Institut Pasteur. 

The impact of the programme extends beyond the careers of individual Fellows, enabling them to contribute to society. Professor Carol Brayne, who helped guide the development of the Fellowship scheme, believes its influence has been felt across institutions and research communities. "The Fellows received in-depth training in leadership and business strategy while furthering their work as postdoctoral researchers."

As the Fellowship enters its second decade, the impact of Lady Mireille and Sir Dennis Gillings' generosity continues to grow. By investing in talented researchers at a formative stage in their careers, they have empowered a generation of scientists to combine medicine, management, and entrepreneurship in pursuit of better public health outcomes worldwide.