10th Dean’s Research Prize celebrates students’ research success

The afternoon highlighted the wide range of research that undergraduates, postgraduates and PhD students across the Faculty are involved in, including gene therapy, the use of 3D printed materials in healthcare, remote teaching for medical students and cancer diagnostics and treatment. All students taking part were joined by a judging panel and an audience of staff and students from across the Faculty. 

An additional online event was held on Thursday 24 Feb for the Faculty heat of the 3 Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition. The winner and runner-up from the heat will participate in the UCL finals, which will take place soon. 

Speaking of the awards, Faculty Dean Prof Mark Emberton said: "This is the 10th anniversary of this competition and it's been fantastic to see how the quality of both the science and particularly the communication just gets better and better. Every single one of the presentations this year has been excellent, huge thanks to all the students who have shared their work and special thanks to the judging panel, who have a very difficult task in selecting the winners!"

For all categories, two prizes were awarded - a Judges’ Award (panel listed below) and a People’s Choice award (chosen by audience vote).

Award winners 

Postgraduate Research presentation: 

• Judges’ Choice: Thomas Fox (Division of Infection & Immunity), 'Towards Gene Therapy for CTLA4 Insufficiency.'

• People’s Choice: Kalliopi Bokea (Division of Surgery & Interventional Science), 'Tumouroids versus xenografts, as platforms for the prediction of treatment response of patients with kidney cancer.'

3MT® presentation: 

• Judges’ Choice: Kavina Shah (Division of Medicine), 'Coercing Cellular Co-operation into Conflict: a paradigm shift in treating autoimmune disease.'

• People’s Choice: Fiona Verisqa (Eastman Dental Institute), 'The best of both worlds: Can we combine 3D printable materials for joint regeneration?' (Below)

Postgraduate taught poster:

• Judges’ Choice: Roaa Al-Bedaery (UCL Medical School), 'A realist evaluation of undergraduate medical teaching with remote (telephone and video) consultations in primary care.'
• People’s Choice: Iris Ee Jiun Liew (Eastman Dental Institute), 'Orthodontic YouTube™ videos made by patients for patients: What are they about and are they accurate?'

Undergraduate poster: 

• Judges’ Choice: Joseph Kettle (Cancer Institute), 'Single Centre Relevance of Predictive and Prognostic Biomarkers for Metastatic Urothelial Cancer.'
• People’s Choice: Elsie Lucia Rodriguez Hernandez (Cancer Institute), 'Clinical and Molecular Characterisation of Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer Patients.'

Judging panel

The posters and presentations were judged by:  

• Prof Tom Carlson (Vice-Dean Education and Professor of Assistive Robotics)
• Dr Edith Chan (Deputy Head of Education and Associate Professor - Teaching)
• Miss Georgia Constantinou (Faculty Student Academic Representative - PGR)
• Dr William Coppola (Department Tutor and Head of Student Support and Associate Professor of Primary Care),
• Prof Nathan Davies (Director of Education and Professor of Biochemistry)
• Prof Justin Hsuan (Departmental Graduate Tutor – Research and Professor of Molecular Cell Biology)
• Dr Rachel Leeson (Departmental Tutor – Research and Clinical Senior Lecturer)
• Mr Hirak Patra (Departmental Graduate Tutor – Research and Associate Professor in Nanomedicine and Regenerative Medicine),
• Mr George Ponodath (Faculty Student Academic Representative - UG)
• Dr Victoria Rathbone (Faculty Student Academic Representative -PGR - Clinical)
• Prof David Selwood (Departmental Tutor -Taught and Professor of Biological and Medical Chemistry),
• Miss Marine-Océane Verdez-Scholler (Faculty Student Academic Representative - UG)
• Dr Milica Vukmanovic-Stejic (Associate Professor of Immunology - Teaching)