Institute of Child Health

The Institute held its annual Poster Competition and Open Day on Wednesday 17 November. The poster competition was again divided into three categories, which were for students who had been registered for 1, 2 or 3 years respectively. In total there were 64 posters eligible for the competition, which were divided fairly equally between the 3 categories. All of the Institute’s themes were represented and the posters gave an excellent indication of the range and diversity of the research taking place in the Institute. The difficult task of judging the posters was kindly undertaken by Torsten Baldeweg, Tim Cole, Andy Copp, Mary Fewtrell, Sarah Hawkes, Christine Kinnon, Kevin Mills, Chris Power and Paul Riley with 3 judges for each category. Once again the judges were very impressed by the overall quality of the posters.

The winners and special commendations were:

First year:

Specially Commended: Carla Startin, Behavioural and Brain Sciences Unit, for her poster entitled:
Investigating a possible genetic influence on facial emotion recognition abilities

2nd Prize: Ching Lau, Immunobiology Unit, for her poster entitled:
The role of Desert Hedgehog in Thymocyte Development

1st Prize: Yating Han, Developmental Biology Unit, for her poster entitled:
Transcriptome analysis and cell surface molecula signature of photoreceptor precursor cells

Second year:

Specially Commended: Suresh Pujar, Neurosciences Unit, for his poster entitled:
Mortality following childhood status epilepticus: a population based study

2nd Prize: Michael Baron, Developmental Biology Unit, for his poster entitled:
Insights into cone development for transplantation therapy

1st Prize: Jane Kirkby, Portex Anaesthesia, Intensive Therapy & Respiratory Medicine Unit, for her poster entitled:
Influence of breathing pattern on specific airways resistance

Third year:

Specially Commended: Michael Yoong, Neurosciences Unit, for his poster entitled:
Hippocampal growth in children is not affected by prolonged seizures

and

Irinna Papangeli, Molecular Medicine Unit, for her poster entitled:
Tbx1 interferes with Tgf-β signaling through the inhibitor Smad7 and impacts on great vessel development

2nd Prize: Pascal Odent, Centre for International Health & Development, for his poster entitled:
Neonatal Survival and Discarding of Colostrum in Nepal: A Mixed Methods Approach

1st Prize: Anna Pearce, Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics, for her poster entitled:
Does the home environment influence inequalities in unintentional injury in early childhood? Findings from the UK Millenium Cohort Study

The Open Day attracted at least 30 potential higher degree research students, who came from a range of British universities including Bristol and Cambridge, as well as a number of colleges and universities from within London.

The ICH Open Day Guest Lecture was given by Professor Patrick Maxwell (Director of the Division of Medicine at UCL) and was entitled “Oxygen Sensing”. Professor Maxwell gave an excellent and informative lecture describing his group’s researches on an oxygen sensing system that appeared to operate in all mammalian cells and the effect which changes in oxygen concentration had on gene regulation. After his stimulating lecture Professor Maxwell handed out certificates (the prizes followed later) to the prize winners of the poster competition.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the contributors, judges, porters and all involved in the organisation of the day but particular thanks go to Stella Fusco and Loraine Daly for ensuring the day was such a success.

David Muller
Postgraduate Tutor

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