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This year’s Student Presentation Day saw researchers from across the MRC WIMM gather to celebrate the work of students at the institute.

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From deep learning models to gene editing to potential immunotherapy targets, the day demonstrated the breadth and quality of research undertaken by our student cohort. Held on Monday 30th May 2022, nineteen students delivered talks across the day, presenting the panel of judges with an incredibly difficult choice in selecting a winner.

‘I was very happy to see not only the appetite by our students to share their science, but also from the rest of our WIMM community who were keen to come together to celebrate the work being done by our students’, says Professor Anne Goriely, Chair of the WIMM Graduate Studies Committee. ‘After a significant period in which many of us felt in suspended animation, it is clear that the legacy of excellent science at the institute has continued. It was extremely difficult for the panel to separate the high quality talks given at this year’s Student Presentation Day’.

After a difficult deliberation process, we are delighted to announce that the 2022 Ita Askonas Medal for best student presentation was awarded to Muhammad Hanifi, a DPhil student supervised by Prof. Tatjana Sauka-Spengler,  Prof. Tudor Fulga and Dr Carlo Rinaldi, for the talk ‘CRISPR Antisense Inhibitor Corrects Type 1 Myotonic Dystrophy Associated Pathologies in Human Cells and Mice’.

The two runners up were:

  • Siyu Liu (supervised by Dr Christian Babbs, Prof. Doug Higgs and Prof. Richard Gibbons) ‘Reactivation of the embryonic ζ-globin gene by promoter editing’
  • Yuqi Shen (supervised by Prof. Doug Higgs and Prof. Richard Gibbons) ‘Unravelling the role of chromatin remodelling factor ATRX in gene expression’