And the winner is…
Cristina Simó Costa
Radiolabelling, monitoring, and preclinical evaluation of urease-powered nanomotors as potential theranostic agents for bladder cancer
„The committee was impressed by the innovative and interdisciplinary nature of the doctoral thesis. Christina’s research combines nanotechnology, robotics and nuclear medicine to improve drug delivery using self-propelled urease-driven nanoparticles. This novel theranostic approach opens up new and unique opportunities for cancer treatment.”
PhD Award Committee 2023
Cristina obtained her PhD at the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastián working in the laboratory of Jordi Llop. She is currently working as a postDoc at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, USA. Her actual research is centered around refining site-specific antibodies modifications for multi-receptor targeting purposes and targeting cell-surface glycans for cancer imaging and therapy. – CONGRATULATIONS!
“Without a doubt, I never had a PhD before with such a combination of skills, motivation, potential, and projection. She was able to understand the scientific problem, conduct literature search, find the most appropriate approach, critically analyze the results obtained, and apply contingency plans or find alternative solutions when required.“
Jordi Llop – PhD Supervisor
TOP Thesis Webinars by runners-up
All in all 25 impressive applications were submitted. Only three of these made it to the final evaluation stage. After an intensive reviewing process, the Committee considered the winner-thesis as more ground-breaking and the impact to the imaging science community as more relevant. Nevertheless, the outstanding work of the three runners-up certainly deserve an acknowledged – congratulations to Nikita and Ravian:
- Nikita Sushentsev, Cambridge
Clinical and biological validation of hyperpolarised MRI of prostate cancer - Ravian van Inefeld, Utrecht
A panoramic view of the phenotypic landscape of healthy and tumor tissues–Multispectral 3D microscopy of intact tissues
PhD Award Committee
- Wolfgang Weber – Munich (Chair)
- Guy Bormans – Leuven (Co-Chair)
- Jolanda de Vries – Nijmegen
- Uwe Himmelreich – Leuven
- Adriaan Lammertsma – Amsterdam
- Jordi Llop – San Sebastian, Spain
- Adriana Tavares – Edinburgh
- Rafael Torres Martin De Rosales – London
- Albert D. Windhorst – Amsterdam
- Giannis Zacharakis – Heraklion