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Women in STEM

Welcome to the group Harriet!

A warm welcome to Harriet Stanway-Gordon who started in the group this month.  Harriet undertook her PhD with Prof. Mike Waring in the Medicinal Chemistry group at Newcastle, focusing on the development of micellar-mediated DNA-compatible chemistry for use in DNA-encoded library (DEL) synthesis, where she was involved in the development and optimisation of multiple classes of reactions. Through the application of this methodology, a proposed new class of drug molecules, termed cyclic peptide small molecule hybrids (CyPeMs) can now be constructed within DELs. Harriet has been awarded an EPSRC doctoral prize to expand upon her PhD research, involving the synthesis of CyPeM DELs and subsequent selection against several challenging epigenetic… Read More »Welcome to the group Harriet!

RSC Chemical Biology Symposium

Kawamura group PhD student Grace Roper attended the RSC Chemical Biology Symposium which took place in London on 9th May 2022.  Grace presented her work in collaboration with GSK with a poster on ‘macrocyclic peptides as affinity probes’.  Some brilliant talks and opportunities for networking,  Grace really enjoyed catching up with colleagues from the Oxford-GSK-Crick CDT.  

Chiara selected to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting!

We are delighted to announce that Chiara Maniaci has been selected to attend the prestigious 71st Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in June. Chiara will join a cohort of 611 of the most qualified young scientists from 91 countries after a rigorous selection process.  She was nominated by the Royal Society and assessed on academic ability, motivation, and extra-curricular activities in a multi-stage process. The meeting will take place in Lindau, Germany from 26 June – 1 July, the participants will be able to meet each other and around 30 Nobel Laureates in person.  The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings foster the exchange among scientists of different generations, cultures, and disciplines. Chiara… Read More »Chiara selected to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting!

Celebrating International Womens Day

International Women’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate the successes of women in our group and appreciate all the supportive allies we have. The theme for the IWD 2022 campaign is #BreakTheBias and we encourage everyone to celebrate women’s accomplishments, raise awareness about bias, and take action to achieve gender equality.  We can proactively take the steps, however small, to call out bias, even when it comes from people who are close to us, and question the stereotypes that still hold us back.  Unfortunately we still live in a world yet free from inequality, bias, stereotypes and discrimination.  In many places women are still excluded from forms of decision making… Read More »Celebrating International Womens Day

Celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science

On International Day of Women and Girls in Science we are proud to celebrate the achievements of the intelligent, hard-working and passionate women in our group.  We have welcomed several new female scientists to the team including PhD students; Filomena Saulino (Oct 2020), Emma Wadforth (Oct 2021), Oliwia Rebacz (Oct 2021), and masters students (Jan 2022); Valeria Cobiltean, Hannah Hamilton. PDRA  Marie-Helene Ruchaud joined the team in September 2021, she is currently developing quantitative cellular assays to investigate inhibitors of SARS-Cov2. Chiara Maniaci was awarded a prestigious BBSRC Discovery fellowship in February 2020 and continues to make great progress with her research. Joanna Bonnici returned to the group in June… Read More »Celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Congratulations Loane!

Many Congratulations to Dr Loane Serrano who successfully defending her DPhil (Oxford) thesis titled  “PCAF, SIRT1 and the regulation of substrate acetylation”.  Thanks to the examiners Dr Richard Hopkinson (Leicester) and Prof James McCullagh (Oxford).  Loane was an EPSRC Synthesis in Biology & Medicine CDT student and was was co-supervised by Prof. Paul Brennan (Centre for Medicines Discovery, Target Discovery Institute, Oxford). Loane really enjoyed her time in the group and said that particular highlights included; the Kawamura symposiums and Christmas dinners, the Epigenetics outreach event in Oxford and getting to know Oxford and Newcastle. Loane will be missed! We wish her every success in her future career!  

Goodbye Hilal!

We bid a fond farewell to Dr Hilal Sarac who leaves the group this week for an exciting role as a senior scientist at Cancer Research UK, Target Discoveries Laboratory in the Francis Crick Institute in London. Hilal has been a credit to the group having made great process on the CRUK and ERC grants.  She will certainly be missed. We asked her to reflect on her time in the Kawamura Lab, she said: I really enjoyed my time both as a visiting PhD student and then as a postdoctoral researcher at Kawamura group in Oxford and in Newcastle. Fortunately, my path crossed with several talented scientists who work in… Read More »Goodbye Hilal!

Welcome to our new PhD Students

A warm welcome to our new PhD students who joined us on 1st October 2021. Emma Wadforth, Oliwia Rebacz, Tom Smith, and Tim Bell will be working across a number of exciting projects funded by BBSRC, EPSRC MoS Med CTD, ERC.

Welcome to the Team Marie-Helene!

Welcome to our new research associate Marie-Helene Ruchaud who joins us from Newcastle University Medical School where she worked on a variety of projects involving innate immunology and inflammation. These included studying the human immune response in epithelial cells following Enteropathogenic E.Coli (EPEC) infection along with the regulation of the innate immune response in severe lung injury & infection or testing potential antimicrobial agents such as p97 inhibitors acting as DNaA inhibitors in Staphyloccocus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. She is currently developing quantitative cellular assays to investigate inhibition of SARS-Cov2 main protease by cyclic peptides. A warm welcome to the team!

Joanna’s viva and baby!

A double congratulations is owed to our own Dr Joanna Bonnici, who successfully navigated the perils of a pandemic-Zoom viva to defend her DPhil thesis in December. With hardly a breath to spare she started a family with her husband Tom, as baby Elsie arrived in late January this year. Joanna has been an asset to the lab throughout her DPhil and is almost certainly, definitely, looking forward to more happy years of research to come… Many congratulations to them all and we look forward to using both events as an excuse to over-celebrate later this year once we are all vaccinated!