The event aimed to showcase the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences and its current research activities, to communicate and celebrate the department's successes and expertise, and to foster a sense of community.
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:
- George Adigbli - Best Oral Presentation for Optimizing multilineage human hematopoietic repopulation in non-irradiated NBSGW mice
- David Fawkner-Corbett - Best Poster Presentation for An investigation into regulatory T-cells in children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus
In addition, the audience voted for the best graduate student communicator. Congratulations to Sean Martin for winning the People's Choice for Best Communicator prize for his talk Deep brain stimulation for multiple system atrophy.
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:
- Peter Holding, John Gilbert and Wanda Groenewald - NDS Employee of the Year
© NDSThere was a three-way tie this year and all three winners are hardworking individuals who go over and above their duties to ensure the success of the department.
Pictured left is Peter receiving the NDS Employee of the Year award from Professor Freddie Hamdy.
- Katherine Hurst - NDS Citizen of the Year
Katherine did a gruelling seven-day bicycle trek from Southampton to Edinburgh, promoting NDS as an employer with zero-tolerance approache to bullying and harassment.
- Tinashe Chandauka - NDS Early Stage Researcher of the Year
Tinashe is a third year Dphil student in Surgical Sciences. He is a partner, co-founder and programming co-lead for the Rhodes Incubator, a Rhodes Scholar and has also volunteered to be the divisional student rep for NDS.
- Islet Isolation Team - NDS Team of the Year
The whole team work tirelessly throughout the year to provide an on-call service for human islet isolation in the UK.
- Fadi Issa - NDS Scientific Achievement of the Year
Fadi won a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Career Development Fellowship in support of his project Investigation of hypoxia-sensing mechanisms in immune regulation.
Highlights from the day included presentations by guest speakers Massimo Loda who spoke about Molecular pathology: past, present and future and Menna Clatworthy who gave the Andrew Bushell Memorial Lecture titled Applying transcriptomics to transplantation.
Another highlight was a talk by Alastair Lamb about communicating research using Twitter, videos and online staff profiles. Timothy Eden from the NDS finance team also presented an enlightening talk on surgery in ancient times.
The day ended with some fascinating stories and insights from The Travelling Vet, Jonathan Cranston, followed by a well-deserved drinks party.