Alison Douglas PhD Dissertation Prize 2016

Sept 16: Congratulation to Rachael Powis and Lukas Solanka for receiving the prize for the best PhD dissertation.

Alison Douglas Prize award

The prize was awarded by Prof Gillian Bates who presented this years’ Mary Pickford lecture in a full house theatre. The theses were of a very high standard and the panel members were impressed by the quality of research conducted by PhD students in the CIP.

Rachael wrote her thesis on ‘Targeting the Ubiquitin Proteasome System to Develop Novel Therapeutic Approaches for Spinal Muscular Atrophy’, supervised by Tom Gillingwater.

Lukas completed his Phd in the group of Matt Nolan and Mark von Rossum (Informnatics) on ‘Modelling microcircuits of grid cells and theta-nested gamma oscillations in the medial entorhinal cortex’.

Congratulations to both and we wish you all the best for your future careers.

Rachael was a fantastic PhD student, who was a pleasure to supervise. Her PhD research has provided important new insights into the biology of the neuromuscular system with direct relevance to the development of new treatments for conditions such as spinal muscular atrophy.

Tom Gillingwater 

Lukas’ PhD thesis is characterised by an excellent grasp of biological ideas and theoretical concepts. This was critical in enabling Lukas to develop models that account well for experimental observations and to make important experimentally testable predictions. 

Matt Nolan