Congratulations to all our students who have completed their PhDs

Congratulations to the following students on the completion of their PhDs

Sophie Langdon from Kings College London whose PhD examined combinations of precision radiotherapy with immunotherapy for the treatment of head and neck cancers, under the supervision of Dr Samantha Terry (KCL) and Dr Tammy Kalber (UCL).

Rhyla Mae Santiagio from University College London passed her PhD project, “Radiation Resistance – understanding the role of cancer stem cell quiescence in glioblastoma radioresistance”. Her supervisors were Professors Simona Parrinello (UCL) and Simon Boulton (Crick).

Kerstin Thol from University College London whose project looked at “Harnessing Whole Genome Sequencing Technologies to Elucidate Lung Cancer Evolution” was supervised by Professor Nicky McGranahan (UCL) and Dr Crispin Hiley (UCL). Kerstin has now secured a post doc position in Dr Sohrab Shah’s lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.

Rebecca Drake from Bart Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University of London whose work focused on enhancing sensitisation to radiotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer. Leading the collaboration between her primary supervisor Prof Kairbaan Hodivala-Dilke (BCI) and secondary supervisor Dr Simon Boulton (Crick), Becca has investigated the mechanisms of resistance to radiotherapy treatment within the tumour microenvironment, with a focus on angiocrine signalling.

Ryan Fullerton from University College London completed his project on ‘Improving the accuracy of Particle Therapy in lung cancer through the development of integrated-mode particle imaging technology’. Ryan was supervised by Dr Charles-Antoine Collins-Fekete who commented: “Through his PhD, Ryan has been developing a one-of-its-kind proton imaging detector to be applied to lung therapy with the new proton therapy centre at UCLH. His PhD led him to bring his detector across many countries, to visit multiple proton/carbon centres around the world, and have attracted the eyes of multiple potential partners to bring his realisation to the clinic.”