Southampton, 05 july 2017
Last Friday, July 1st 2017, saw the return of the annual Biological Sciences Postgraduate Symposium, with a wide variety of talks from 3rd year PhD students and poster presentations of 2nd year students from across the school. The symposium gives students the chance to present their research to their peers and colleagues to inform all of their work and the range of subjects that are researched here at Southampton.
Talks ranged from ecological research with Emma Joslin presenting on the beneficial effects of having aromatic herb plants, such as lavender and thyme, in apple orchards to improve fruit yields, to cancer research into the contagious cancers that are effecting the Tasmanian devil and how these animals use different strategies to invade the immune system when transferred between hosts.
Posters covered developmental biology with Laura Caetano’s poster on how changes in uterine fluid composition can affect endocytosis of nutrients in embryos to how biofilms around bacteria can contribute to contamination of urinary catheters, presented by Malissa Rahimi.
At the end of the day, prizes were awarded to the top three posters and oral presentations. This year, Miss Grace Hallinan was awarded first prize for her oral presentation on the use of microfluidic chambers to assess the spread of the pathological protein, tau, from diseased donor neurons to healthy acceptor neurons. A special mention goes to Alison Caldwell and Alex Hull who were awarded second and third place respectively.
The winner for this year’s poster presentations was Rachel Owen for her poster on the origins of Tasmanian devil cancer. Congratulations also go to Katie Askew and Monika Kudelska for their second and third place awards, respectively.
We look forward to next year’s symposium and the wide range of talks and poster that will be presented!