A big congratulations to 4 of our Cohort 1 students who recently passed their Viva examinations!!
Sarah Ennis was the first of the cohort 1 Galway students to pass her viva on 7th Dec – Sarah worked on “Genetic determinants of microenvironment-driven leukemia pathogenesis” with supervisor Dr Eva Szegezdi and co-supervisor Pilib O’Broin. Sarah has now moved to Canada and plans to find a job in Industry!
Shane O’Connell, also based in Galway, followed Sarah not long after when he passed his viva on 22nd Dec – Shane’s research project was on “Deep learning of image-derived phenotypes for improved interpretability of GWAS associations” under the supervision of Pilib O’Broin and co-supervisor Dara Cannon. Shane is going to Mount Sinai, New York where he did his placement to do a postdoc with Niamh Mullins’ group!
Next up was Lydia King who was also based in Galway – Lydia passed her viva on 29th Jan 24 – She worked on “Exploring novel survival analytics in longitudinal genomics data linked to disease presentation and treatment outcome for breast cancer” under the supervision of Dr Emma Holian. Lydia is now working as a staff scientist in the UK BioBank and is based in Oxford UK!
And finally Isabelle Boothman is the first CRT student to graduate from RCSI. Isabelle passed her viva on 9th Feb 24 and her research project was on “Identifying genetic risk factors and developing predictive models for severe cutaneous adverse drug reactions” under the supervision of Prof Gianpiero Cavalleri. Isabelle now plans to look for a job in Industry in the US!
Its fantastic to see our cohort 1 students start to graduate from the programme and move onto the next exciting stage in their careers. Its a real pleasure to see how these young researchers have developed so much over the last 4 years despite the challenges of the pandemic and we look forward to seeing the rest of our cohort 1 students finish up over the next few months – some have already submitted their thesis’ and are anxiously awaiting their viva and other are in the throes of writing and hope to submit in the coming months so the best of luck to them all!