Winner of the Geoff Hall Scholarship 2022

The Geoff Hall Scholarships (GHSs) are given in honour of a former President of EMWA. Geoff was a very special person, an extremely valued member of EMWA, and a very good friend to many EMWA members. He firmly believed that the future of EMWA lies in our new and potential members, and so it’s a very fitting legacy that we have the Scholarship Awards in his memory.

The Scholarships are awarded annually based on an essay competition, and the title of this year’s essay was ‘The Ethics of Medical Writing’. The committee has the ability to award up to two scholarships each year. This year they decided to award a single scholarship - to Sampoorna Rappaz.

Sampoorna received her master’s degree in human genetics from the University of Leeds in 2008 and completed her doctoral training in cancer biology at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich, Switzerland, in 2014. After a career break, she restarted her professional life as a freelance scientific editor in 2019.

She found deep satisfaction in helping authors effectively communicate complex and important science. During 2020-21, as our world was awash with health-related information, she became even more keenly focused on training to become a professional medical communicator.

Sampoorna’s winning essay is published in the June 2022 edition of Medical Writing, and we wish her the very best at the start of her very promising medical writing career.

For those of you inspired to pick up your laptop, this year’s essay title is ‘How to keep your reader interested from start to finish'.