Student Profiles
The Graduate Studies Committee awards annual prizes to students of NDM supervisors on the basis of their publication record, the impact and novelty of their research, references, and the impact of their research within the department.
Graduate Research Prize Winners 2011 - 2012
- Abhilasha Karkey (Dr Stephen Baker, Tropical Medicine) for her efforts to learn and study the epidemiology and transmission of typhoid fever with limited resources while based in Nepal. Her phenomenal will and drive has led to several novel and useful findings.
Read Abhilasha's story - Aparna Pal (Anna Gloyn, OCDEM) for securing a number of prestigious prizes at the Diabetes UK Annual Professional Conference, and for her DPhil studies being published a first author manuscript in the New England Journal Of Medicine.
Read Aparna's story - Christian Bell (Christian Siebold, Dave Stuart, Yvonne Jones, STRUBI) for his significant work on the “Structural studies of chemotaxis in prokaryotes and higher eukaryotes” which resulted in publications in high profile journals with two first author publications in PLos Biology and a co-author publication in Nature.
Read Christian's story - Johannes Schödel (David Mole, CCMP) for his outstanding work on defining pan-genomic patterns of HIF transcription factor binding and in linking these findings to GWAS signals of renal cancer susceptibility. His work has been published as first author in Blood and Nature genetics.
Read Johannes's story - Owen Siggs (Richard Cornall, CCMP) for impressive first author publications, he is a most original and clear thinking student.
Read Owen's story - Tomas Malinauskas (Yvonne Jones, STRUBI) for his work structure/function analysis of the Wnt inhibitor WIF-1, as a result Tomas was sole first name author of a paper published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.
Read Tomas's story - Matthew Rees (Professor Mark McCarthy, Anna Gloyn OCDEM) for his very impressive body of work which has so far resulted in first author papers in The Journal of Clinical Investigation and Diabetologia. He was the winner of the 2010 Elsevier Prize. He has spent the last year back at NIH implementing a small molecule screen for GCK-GKRP interactions.
Read Matthew's story - Mario Notari (Professor Xin Lu, Ludwig Institute) for two important scientific discoveries; 1) the biological importance of iASPP, an evolutionarily conserved regulator of p53 family of proteins, in controlling epithelial stratification and 2) the role of iASPP in preventing cardio-cutaneous disorder.
Read Mario's story
Graduate Research Prize Winners 2010 - 2011
- Aleksandra Watson (Chris O’Callaghan, CCMP) for structural and functional analysis of the human platelet receptor CLEC-2, the snake venom toxin rhodocytin, and the dengue virus receptor MDL-1.
Read Aleksandra's story - Charlotte Coles (Radu Aricescu and Yvonne Jones, STRUBI) for studies dissecting key cell surface signalling mechanisms involved in nerve regeneration, published in Science.
Read Charlotte's story - Nicola Beer (Anna Gloyn and Patrik Rorsman, OCDEM) for translating a genome-wide association signal associated with triglyceride and glucose levels into a molecular mechanism.
Read Nicola's story - Ricardo Fernandes (Simon Davis, WIMM) for work on T cell receptor signalling and the roles of conformation change and phosphorylation in triggering T cell activation.
Read Ricardo's story
Graduate Research Prize Winners 2009 - 2010
- Najib Rahman (Robert Davies, Respiratory Medicine) for a clinical trial demonstrating the important benefits of tPA and DNase in the management of pleural infection and drainage, and for other significant advances in the diagnoses and treatment of pleural disease.
Read Najib's story - Andy Johnson (Richard Cornall, CCMP) for identifying the Themis superfamily and the role of Themis1 in T cell selection, published as a first author paper in Nature Immunology, and for work on DOCK8, also published in Nature Immunology.
Read Andy's story - Monika Mortensen (Christian Siebold, STRUBI) for her work identifying the essential role of autophagy in the maintenance of erythropoiesis.
Read Monika's story
Graduate Research Prize Winners 2008 - 2009
- Stanley Ng (Udo Oppermann, SGC) for solving the structure of a histone H3K9 and H3K36 demethylase and work leading to new understanding of DNA modification and epigenetics, published in Nature.
Read Stanley's story - Giulia Zanetti (Stephen Fuller, STRUBI) for work using cryo-electron-tomography to solve the structure of the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Envelope Complex and for outstanding technical advances in the field.
Read Giulia's story - Benjamin Bishop (Christian Siebold, STRUBI) for work on structural and functional aspects of hedgehog ligands and their receptors.
Read Benjamin's story - Aleksandra Leligdowicz (Sarah Rowland-Jones, ExpMed) for ground-breaking work on immunity to HIV-2 in West Africa leading to new targets for effective vaccine design.
Read Aleksandra's story
Graduate Research Prize Winners 2007 - 2008
- Thomas Bowden (Dave Stuart and Yvonne Jones, STRUBI) for work on virus host interactions leading to insights into how viruses migrate from animal to human hosts, and for solving the complex structure of the interaction between the Nipah and Hendra viruses and the human cell guidance molecule ephrin, published as a first author paper in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.
Read Thomas' story - Stephen Chapman (Adrian Hill) for studies on host susceptibility to bacteria in severe respiratory disease, described in a series of papers including two first author papers in Nature Genetics.
Read Stephen's story - John James (Simon Davis, WIMM) for technical advances and paradigm shifting insights into the mechanisms of GPR and TCR signalling, with first author papers in Nature Methods and PNAS.
Read John's story - Emma Link (Sarah Parish and Rory Collins, CTSU) for the design and conduct of a trial with important implications for public health. She discovered that genetic variants in SLCO1B1 predict statin-induced myopathy, and has recently published these findings as a first author in NEJM. Read Emma's story
- Anastasia Nijnik (Richard Cornall, CCMP) for work describing the link between NHEJ, DNA repair and ageing in stem cells, published as a first-author article in Nature.
Read Ana's story - Sonja Vernes (Simon Fisher, WTCHG) for her study of the role of Foxp2 and its related pathways in the development of language, published in a series of papers including a first author article in NEJM.
Read Sonja's story



