ICH Student Profiles
Current Students
Sophie-Beth Aylett
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Sophie-Beth
graduated in Pharmacology (Undergraduate Masters) with a First Class Honours
degree from the University of Bath in 2010, which included a year-long
placement working at the leading Biopharma company, UCB. In addition, she also
gained vital laboratory experience in the Inflammatory Cell Biology Lab at the
University of Bath where final year project work was undertaken. Following a
successful application, Sophie-Beth enrolled as an MPhil/PhD student at the UCL
Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital in September 2010
and was awarded a prestigious grant from the Child Health Research Appeal Trust
to fund her research. Sophie-Beth is currently a student within the Clinical
and Molecular Genetics Unit under the supervision of Professor Simon Heales and
Dr Shamima Rahman and is studying the mechanisms responsible for the central
folate deficiency observed in Mitochondrial Disease. Besides her full-time
research, Sophie-Beth is also a member of the Staff/Student Consultative
Committee, of which she is currently Chairperson, a member of the ICH
Postgraduate Society and organises the weekly lab meetings attended by members
of her Unit.
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Dessi Malinova
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In 2010, Dessi graduated with a Natural Sciences
degree from Queens' College, Cambridge, where she gained research experience in
cancer research (Cath Green, Zoology, Cambridge) and microbiology (Gillian
Fraser, Pathology, Cambridge). One of her particular interests was the
cell cytoskeleton and its regulation. She joined ICH as an MPhil/PhD student to
study the role of the actin cytoskeleton in the formation of the immune
synapse, where her supervisors are Dr Gerben Bouma and Prof Adrian Thrasher
from the Molecular Immunology Unit. Despite having a very limited immunology
background, Dessi found her unit to be a welcoming, motivating and informative
environment. The project itself combines a large number of techniques and uses
a Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome model to investigate how a defect in this actin
regulator affects immune synapse formation and function. Dessi's non-academic
involvements include being president of the UCLU Hiking and Walking Club and
representing UCL at the World Model UN conference in 2011. She is also a member
of the ICH Staff/Student Consultative Committee and the UCH Student Society.
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Past Students
Bruno Ferraz de Souza
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ICH,
triggering his interest in translational research. He enrolled as an MPhil/PhD
candidate in 2007, supported by a scholarship from Capes, an agency of the
Brazilian Ministry of Education. Bruno’s
work looked at identifying novel genes involved in the development of the
adrenal glands in humans through the manipulation of steroidogenic factor-1, a
master regulator of adrenal development. His PhD was supervised by Dr John
Achermann and Professor Mehul Dattani, from the Developmental Endocrinology
Research Group in the Clinical & Molecular Genetics Unit. Besides
his full-time research, he served as a student representative on ICH’s
Staff/Student Consultative Committee which he chaired during 2008/09, and
Biomedical Sciences Editor for Opticon1826, UCL’s postgraduate-run academic
review. Bruno
completed his PhD in 2011 and returned to a research position in Brazil.
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Saba Raza
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Saba joined UCL Medical School as an undergraduate in 2004.
After completing her preclinical studies, she undertook an intercalated BSc
in neuroscience based in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology
at the Royal Free Hospital. She gained further research experience in Judith
Campisi’s group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, before
commencing her clinical training at University College Hospital. In 2008, Saba was appointed to the UCL MB PhD programme, in
which students combine both clinical and research training by intercalating a
PhD in the clinical course. Saba was awarded a Medical Research Council
studentship to support the PhD stage of the MB PhD course. Her research was based on neural tube defects and
neurulation, and she investigated a mouse model of spina bifida, under the
co-supervision of Professor Andrew Copp and Dr Nicholas Greene in the Neural
Development Unit. Saba was involved with the Postgraduate Society and social
committee at ICH, and chaired the staff-student consultative committee in
2009/10. She was also a vice warden at UCL’s Gower Street student residences. Saba successfully completed her PhD in December 2011 and in
January 2012 returned to her clinical studies to continue studying for her
MBBS.
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Page last modified on 17 may 12 15:32
