She has been involved with the Centre for Translational Medicine since the beginning and has contributed to the development of the program. She is now supervising three students' research and helps them conducting their meta-analyses. In December, Andrea Szentesi was named the Supervisor of the Month.

Dr. Andrea Szentesi has been working in the field of translational medicine since 2014 and has accompanied its development in Hungary. “In 2014, I started to work as the coordinator of the Pancreas Registry run by the Hungarian Pancreatic Study Group based in Szeged. In 2016, I participated in the launch of the Translational Medicine Centre in Pécs, led by Professor Péter Hegyi. At Semmelweis University, I was also involved in the design and launch of the program until October 2021.” Andrea is still helping CTM, supervising and co-supervising a second-year and two first-year Ph.D. students. Their research is related to the pancreas.

“Students in CTM's PhD program are very lucky because they receive multidisciplinary support. In addition to the professional background, they can also improve in clinical research methodologies and all kinds of soft skills, from time management to presentation techniques. Regular meetings also provide an opportunity to discuss projects”. Andrea points out that being a supervisor in this program is easy.

“We work as a team. We have joint meetings with other students led by Péter Hegyi, and students take part in each other’s projects as well. It is important for getting insight into and practice in more research projects. Although we do not have a published article yet, we are in the article writing phase with Gefu Cai in the second year. After properly clarifying the research question and starting a meta-analysis, we are receiving the first statistics with Dalma Dobszai and Luca Havelda in the first year. We are looking forward to further results and projects.“

Besides her work as a supervisor, Andrea is the head of a team ensuring the quality of clinical trials in the field of pancreatic research led by Professor Péter Hegyi. She is located in Szeged, but most of the supervising and work is manageable remotely and she travels to the personal group meetings several times a month.

(Emese Szabó)