Congratulations to Laura Fitzpatrick, a final year student on the MSci Genetics programme in the School of Life Sciences, on being awarded "Placement of the Year" at the third annual Science Industry Skills Awards ceremony,  organised by Cogent Skills, in London on 7 May 2015.  

Laura's one year work placement at Medimmune in session 2013/14 was a proof-of-principle project aimed at investigating the potential use of exosomes as a novel intracellular drug delivery platform. During her placement year she established that exosomes could be targeted to specific markers overexpressed on the surface of tumour cells, and that they could be loaded with chemotherapeutic drugs.

Opportunity

Laura was nominated for the award by her line manager at MedImmune, and was shortlisted, along with two other finalists, for a telephone interview with a panel of judges, and then invited to film a short video answering questions about her placement, which was shown at the ceremony on 7 May.

On winning her award Laura was congratulated by Dr Iain Johnstone, Deputy Head of School and convener of the MSci Work Placement degree programmes in Life Sciences. Laura told him: "My work placement year really was the best thing I could have done for my future career, and I really can't thank you enough for giving me the opportunity to be accepted onto the work placement scheme".

Image of Placement winner Laura Fitzpatrick

First published: 19 May 2015

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