Held for the second year at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, the event aimed to showcase the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences and its current research activities.
PGR students, ACFs, ACLs and other researchers within the department were given the opportunity to present their research through short presentations and posters. Those judged to have given the best talk and presented the best poster were presented with a certificate and gift voucher by the Head of Department, Professor Freddie Hamdy.
Congratulations to the prize winners:
Prateek Katti - Best Oral Presentation for Enhancing anti-PD-L1 efficacy by employing ultrasound and nanobubbles to increase anti-PD-L1 intratumoral delivery and distribution
Xiaoning Wu - Best Poster Presentation for Investigating a potential role for the Polycomb Group protein EZH2 in radiotherapy resistance in prostate cancer cells
In addition, the audience voted for the best graduate student communicator. Congratulations to Tinashe Chandauka for winning the inaugural People's Choice for Best Communicator prize.
Professor Hamdy also announced the winners of the NDS Staff Awards. All members of the department were asked to nominate colleagues in four categories, and the winners were decided by the NDS Staffing Committee.
Congratulations to the award winners:
Monica Dolton - NDS Employee of the Year
Rebecca Spiers - NDS Citizen of the Year
Yongzhi Huang - NDS Early Stage Researcher of the Year
QUOD - NDS Team of the Year
Alastair Lamb - NDS Scientific Achievement of the Year for winning a Cancer Research UK Clinician Scientist Fellowship.
Highlights from the day included a presentation by David Neal about his career in academic medicine, and Fadi Issa gave the inaugural Andrew Bushell Memorial Lecture titled 'C57BL/6 to TR001: Journey of a Translational Scientist'. The lecture was attended by members of the Bushell family.
Another highlight was a session on communication and engagement with talks from guest speakers Clint Witchalls from The Conversation, and Owen Coxall and Judith Ames from the Bodleian Health Care Libraries. James FitzGerald and Jo Cook from the department also spoke about their experiences of public engagement at NDS.
The day ended with a fun quiz organised by Professor David Cranston - congratulations to the winner John Gilbert - followed by a well-deserved drinks reception.