NEW GRADUATE Rebekah Mahoney is getting ready to jet off to the United States, as she has taken up the offer of studying for her doctorate in San Antonio.

The 22-year-old graduates today with a BSc Honours degree in Biomedical Sciences and will soon swap her hometown of Bessbrook, Co Down for the Health Science Centre at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Rebekah is returning to the American university where she spent her internship on her third year of study at Ulster.

During that time she took part in neurological research at what is one of the most prestigious centres for biomedical research in the US. Her placement year proved so successful that Rebekah is also today picking up the Abbott Internship Award.

Rebekah said: “Being in America for my intern year has prepared me for spending the next six years there doing my PhD. They have an integrated multi-disciplinary programme for the doctorate there and then you decide which area you want to focus on and I would be interested in carrying out work in degenerative neurological diseases which is the same area I was researching for my placement.”

Wedding bells may also be in the air, as Rebekah is not only returning to San Antonio to study but also returning to her fiancée Michael who she met while an intern.

Rebekah’s link up with the Health Science Centre has shown the development of the relationship between Texas and Ulster as just two years ago, in 2008 Ulster’s School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Physiology at Texas signed an agreement towards improving the academic and cultural experience of students from Ulster and enabling them to undertake an internship at the University of Texas.