Each year MRC Toxicology Unit group leaders, research staff, students and support staff take part in our annual Science Day to celebrate science and achievements over the past year. This year we were based in the beautiful Møller Institute overlooking Churchill College grounds.
After excellent breakfast muffins and a welcome by Unit Director Professor Anne Willis, Professors James Thaventhiran and Kiran Patil kicked of proceedings with our theme talks. They shared the work that all five groups have been doing together on our two MRC Toxicology Unit research themes, the Safety of Advanced Therapeutics and Molecular Impact of Environmental Exposures, and our vision for the future. We were joined by collaborators in other departments at the University of Cambridge including Professor Eric Miska who is head of the Biochemistry Department. Professor Miska gave an engaging keynote talk spanning various aspects of his research on RNA biology. He shared fascinating insights into how RNA folds and how different RNA structures interact with other components in the cell.
After a delicious lunch and a chance to chat informally, we listened to TTI Fellow at the Unit Amrita Mukherjee share her work into the toxic effects of drugs on the mitochondria in both the testes and intestine. We then viewed 20 posters from our facilities, PhD students and Post-docs in a relaxed poster session where everyone could find out what their colleagues are working on. Also a few of our second year PhD students shared their thesis topic in just three minutes using non-scientific language in our 3 Minute Thesis competition. A selection of our 3MT talks are available on our YouTube channel if you wish to get a flavour for the variety of research topics covered at the Unit.
At the Unit we love to recognise members who go above and beyond their roles taking on extra tasks, contributing to Unit and University wide initiatives and promoting better culture and EDI (Equality, Diversity & Inclusion). We had 44 nominations across four categories from colleagues in the Unit. The judges from the Unit and the wider University found all of the nominations to be great and it was hard to choose some of the winners. This year our Unit recognition scheme prizes were awarded to:
Mentor of the Year: Robert Harvey, Willis group, Joanna Salmon, Thaventhiran group and Simone Mozzachiodi, Patil group (joint winners)
Culture, Diversity and EDI: Eve Stalker, Willis group and Simone Baldan, Sawarkar group (joint winners)
Student Contribution of the Year: Odara Medagedara, Willis and MacFarlane groups (winner), Kate Williamson, Patil group (runner up)
Support Staff Contribution of the Year: Dale Roberts, Maintenance (winner), Samuel Shum, IT (runner up)
We also awarded prizes for the best PhD speakers from our seminar series throughout the year, for our 3MT competition and SciComm Stars for those who have contributed most to sharing our science.
Best PhD student seminar: David O'Loughlin, MacFarlane Group
Science Day 3MT winner: Yunyue (Gwen) Wang, Sawarkar group
SciComm Stars Awards:
Gold - Odara Medagedara, Willis and MacFarlane groups, Gavin Garland, Willis group, Gili Zilberman-Schapira, Patil group
Silver - Joanna Salmon, Marguerite Colin, Ed-Simmons Rosello, Hashim Ahmed Nur, Brain Bassey, Rebecca Boston, Vita Chamberlain-Evans, Anfas Muhammed, Eve Stalker, Vanessa Wong Yue Qing, Sophie Breusegem, Christo Christov, Maria Rust, Melika Mohebi Fard, Amy Lewis, Simone Baldan, Gwen Wang, Lajos Kalmar, Emma Gould, David O'Loughlin, Nonantzin Beristain Covarrubias
Bronze - Madeleine Thimann, Kirsti Hornigold, Nobuhiro Morone, Gruffydd Behnan, Francesca Eichacker, Aditi Madkaikar, Rui Guan, Kiran Patil, Kadri Seppa, Cameron Cole, Rebecca Raven, Alex Fulton, Veronica Dezi, Aaran Vijayakumaran, Sandip Kumar Patel, Xiao-Ming Sun, Anne Willis, Tiago Marques Pedro, Alex Ferreira, Juan Carlos Yam-Puc, Kate Williamson, Sonja Blasche, Dimitris Aspri, Ivan Yang Ji, Anjelika Galapon, Indra Roux, Simran Aulakh, Rob Bradley, Magda Locker
Our day wrapped up with research talks from post-docs Niall Buckley, Maria Rust, Robert Harvey, Mengjia Li and Stephan Kamrad who represented our five groups in the Unit. We learnt about CDK9 inhibitors, gut microbiome metabolites, heat shock induced protein stress, RNA vaccine design and drugs that stop mitochondria from working in cancer cells.