Vicky Bull, PhD student, was awarded the ‘BMUS Young Investigator's Award’ and Dr Maria Vinci, Post Doc Training Fellow, is nominated for a SET for BRITAIN Award.
Vicky Bull, PhD student in the Therapeutic Ultrasound team has been awarded the prestigious ‘British Medical Ultrasound Society (BMUS) Young Investigator's Award’.
Vicky, who was awarded session winner for her talk, “Development of a hybrid ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging system for the guidance and monitoring of focused ultrasound therapy” had to battle it out in front of a panel of ‘X-factor’-style judges.
As part of her award, Vicky will receive funding to represent the UK in the European Young Investigator session at Euroson 2013 in Stuttgart.
Dr Maria Vinci, Post Doc Training Fellow in the ICR’s Cancer Therapeutics division, has been nominated for a SET for BRITAIN Award for her research aiming to improve tumour modelling and reduce reliance on animal research.
Maria's poster will be displayed at the House of Commons on 18 March, and together with 60 other posters will represent research from the best in the field.
SET for BRITAIN encourages, supports and promotes Britain's early-stage and early-career research scientists. Nominees stand to win a cash prize and the overall winner will be awarded the Westminster Medal.
Maria's poster highlights her research, funded by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), on the validation of 3D tumour assays for rapid and accurate quantification of key aspects of the malignant phenotype. Her research is recognised as worthy of nomination because it provides a way of significantly improving drug target validation and evaluation. Standard 2D monolayer cultures do not adequately mimic the complexity of a tumour in vivo, and current 3D techniques are time consuming and lack reproducibility. Implementing the 3Rs principles (replace, reduce and refine), Maria’s development of highly reproducible 3D assays increases the translational predictive value of in vitro drug evaluation studies, reducing the reliance on in vivo studies.
We wish them both the very best of luck.