Many congratulations to St Edmund’s alumna, Professor Sarah Cleaveland OBE FRS, (VetMB, 1983) who has been awarded the 2018 Leeuwenhoek Medal and Lecture by the Royal Society for her pioneering work towards the eradication of rabies throughout the world. Sarah commented, “It’s an incredible honour and came as a complete surprise!  But I’m really excited by the opportunity to raise awareness about rabies.”

Sarah was the first woman to be awarded the British Veterinary Association Trevor Blackburn Award in 2008 in recognition of her work on animal and human infectious diseases in Africa. She is a founding director of the Alliance for Rabies Control whose mission is to prevent human deaths caused by infection with the rabies virus and reduce the burden of this disease in animals. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2012, elected to the National Academy of Medicine in October 2015, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in April 2016.

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to veterinary epidemiology.