About

Bioinformatics and AI-assisted drug discovery PhD Student at UCL. Funded by the MRC and in the iCase DTP, my industrial partner is Immunocore, an Oxford-based biotech company.
I have extensive experience in protein biochemistry and cancer research. Proficient in developing machine learning models focusing on antibody and TCR-based drug engineering and discovery.

Skills

Research Interests

Experience

ConceptionX (Ongoing)

Participant of the ConceptionX start-up accelerator.

Turing Data Study Group (May 2023)

During the Data Study Group (DSG) with the Environmental Investigation Agency, our team developed a tool to identify individual tigers from their stripe patterns using a database of tiger skin images linked to illegal wildlife traders. Eager to apply my programming skills in a novel context, I chose this computer-vision project to explore cross-disciplinary learning. I contributed to the image preprocessing pipeline, normalizing stripe patterns by mapping images into 3D space, and developed a method for embedding image data for model training. Additionally, I expanded the dataset using stylegan3 to fine-tune artificially produced images of tiger stripe patterns.

In.vent Diagnostica (September 2020 - January 2021)

Helped establish new protein array project that formed the new engine gmbh. As the sub-company of the biotech company in.vent diagnostica was just being formed, my tasks were varied and I had the opportunity to gather experience in many domains in this fast-paced environment . The focus was developing and testing new protein array products for diagnosis and treatment- monitoring via biomarker identification (cancer, autoimmune diseases). I also took on a client interfacing role, responding to queries and requests regarding data interpretation and our technology. I was also a company representative at Analytica Conference and Medica Conference and managed to secure two new clients. http://www.engine-gmbh.de/company-about.html

UCL Cancer Institute (June 2019 - May 2020)

CAR-T cell treatment for Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. During my time at the lab I primarily worked on a project researching small drug molecules for MCT-1 inhibition, which were used for exploring their impact on CAR T cells, specifically their expansion and interaction with tumor cells. The effectivity of targeting lactate metabolism via MCT-1 in combination with CAR T cell therapies against B-cell malignancies was explored. My main tasks in the lab included cloning (including plasmid design), cell-culturing, blood sample handling, T-cell isolation and various immuno-fluorescent techniques. I received training in flow-cytometry and experiment data analysis.

Projects

Here is a summary of projects I have worked on throughout my PhD and side-projects I have pursued.