Support for a Thai student to study for a PhD in Medicine or Biomedical Sciences at Cambridge will be available from 2023 thanks to a partnership between Trinity College and the Prince Mahidol Award Foundation.
The Prince Mahidol Studentship will provide more than £50,000 per year for fees and living costs after the Master of Trinity, Dame Sally Davies, and the former Master, Sir Gregory Winter, signed an agreement with leaders of the Prince Mahidol Award Foundation at a ceremony in Sra Pathum Palace, Bangkok, in the presence of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Charki Sirindhorn, who is President of the Prince Mahidol Award Foundation.
The partnership was facilitated by Honorary Fellow of Trinity and former Thai Prime Minister, His Excellency Mr Anand Panyarachun, who studied Law at the College, 1952-1955.
His Royal Highness Prince Mahidol, 1892–1929, is widely regarded as the father of modern medicine and public health in Thailand. In 1905 he was sent to England to attend Harrow School and then underwent military training in Germany. He left military service to study public health, then medicine, at Harvard and practised as a doctor in a missionary hospital in Chiang Mai.
Prince Mahidol taught at Chulalongkorn University and the Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital. He also established scholarships for students of medicine, nursing and public health, and forged an agreement between the Thai government and the Rockefeller Foundation to improve education in medicine and public health in Thailand.
In 1992, on the centenary of the Prince’s birth, the Prince Mahidol Award was established to recognise outstanding contributions to medicine and public health. In 2016, former Master of Trinity, Sir Gregory Winter, was awarded the Prince Mahidol Award for his contribution to Medicine. Afterwards Sir Gregory established the Prince Mahidol Fund at the College. The new agreement ensures the permanent endowment of the Prince Mahidol Studentship at Trinity.
Regius Professor of Physic and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine at Cambridge, Patrick Maxwell, who is a Trinity Fellow, said:
I am thrilled by this generous gift from the Prince Mahidol Award Foundation to support bright Thai students to undertake advanced research at Cambridge. Our aim, as a College and University, is to attract brilliant people from all over the world and the new partnership between the Foundation and Trinity College advances this shared objective. I look forward to welcoming Prince Mahidol Award PhD students in the coming years.
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