Honours Students From Haematology Department in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at the top of the Scientific Achievement
Miss Annabel Kruzins was enrolled in a 2 year Master of Science degree (Hons) at UTS which was composed of a year of course work and a second year of an honours research project.
“My primary reason for approaching the team at RPAH was the real-world context and interesting topics on offer. I worked with fresh samples obtained directly from patients at RPAH with the help of many physicians such as Dr Christian Bryant, Prof. Joy Ho and Prof. Douglas Joshua. Being part of a hospital, it meant that I was able to participate in immunology research with a clinical emphasis and had access to some highly advanced equipment, such as the mass spectrometry machine (CyTOF) at the University of Sydney and a Fortessa 18-colour flow cytometer at the Institute of Haematology, RPAH which lead to some quite compelling findings.”
“The most valuable part of the project was working with my supervisor Dr Slavica Vuckovic, Senior Research Scientist, who is so passionate about her work but was also very supportive of my interests and guiding my learning. I learnt more from her in the short time at RPAH than I could have ever anticipated. Not just about Myeloma, but skills and attitudes to research, science and life in general.”
“The most rewarding part of the project is my first-co-authored manuscript “Mass Cytometry Discovers Two Discrete Subsets of CD39−Treg Which Discriminate MGUS From Multiple Myeloma”, published in Frontiers in Immunology and is ranked in the top 10.0 % most viewed and downloaded articles in the 3rd quarter of 2019. This publishing achievement is complemented with my first class honours”.
Mr Ka Hei Aleks Lau completed his honours project at Institute of Haematology, RPAH. His project identifed changes in T lymphocytes during progression from monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance to multiple myeloma.
His poster presentation “Interplay between bone marrow-resident CD69hi and clonally expanded terminal effector cells in Multiple Myeloma patients” reflects the level of excellence in his research and was awarded “Best Poster Award” at the Sydney New Horizons 2019 conference. This award represents the most notable achievements of more than 40 undergraduate and graduate students who participated in the Student Poster Competition.
“Attending Sydney New Horizons 2019 conference is an opportunity to share my research and exchange ideas with scientists who are working in the cancer and immunotherapy field. I am thrilled winning the student poster competition.”
“My research success is built on support from multi-institutional team from UTS, RPAH and the University of Sydney with expertise in mass cytometry, flow cytometry and bioinformatics and guidelines from supervisors Dr Slavica Vuckovic, Dr Najah Nassif, Dr Christian Bryant and Professor Joy Ho. Expose to the research in the hospital environment helps me to pursue my career as a hospital scientist in the future.”