MSc and BSc students

I joined the Maini lab in 2020 as a student on the Infection and Immunity MSc at UCL. I am interested in how the molecular events inside immune cells, such as their metabolism or signalling, influence mounting effective responses against viral infections and cancer. During my Masters project, I worked with Drs Laura Pallett and Leo Swadling to investigate how T cells respond to nutrient starvation. Namely, I asked how these cells adapt to glucose restriction, which can act as a barrier to anti-tumour immunity.  I am a fan of computational approaches, such as proteomics and transcriptomics, and how these advanced tools can direct laboratory work and make powerful inferences of their own.

I'm a master's student currently studying Infection and Immunity at UCL with a BSc in Infectious Diseases. As I have a background in infectious diseases but have little experience in a lab I was very interested in joining the Maini lab for my project due to their focus on viral hepatitis and access to data from human samples. My project was looking at the role of B cells in the liver and researching the relatively novel topic of B cell tissue residency with some analysis of B cell residency marker expression in samples provided by the lab.