Postgraduate palaeontologist and biophysicist receive awards
Prizes for talented PhD students from St John’s
Two PhD students at St John’s have been recognised for their innovative research and communication skills.
Princess Aira Buma-at has won a 2024 Palaeontological Association Annual Meeting President’s Prize, the association’s highest award given to PhD students and early-career researchers within a year of achieving their higher degree.
Princess, who is a PhD student in Palaeontology in the Department of Zoology and the Museum of Zoology, was one of six winners of the prize, which she was given for her illustrated talk at the 68th Annual Meeting at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen, Germany, in December.
“It was my first time presenting my PhD findings at a conference so receiving the award was truly a fantastic surprise,” said Princess, whose talk was called Morphometric Analyses of ‘Charniodiscus’ from the Ediacaran of Newfoundland, Canada.
The winners received an official certificate and one-year free membership to the association.
The award is Princess’s second prize in less than a year; in June she was presented with the President’s Award from The Geological Society for her ‘innovative research’ as well as her ‘infectious enthusiasm and talent for effortlessly translating geoscience to different audiences’.
Simon Brauberger, who is in the first year of his PhD in Biophysics, has received a prize at the Single-Molecule Sensors and NanoSystems International Conference in Paris for his poster about using solid-state nanopores, a single-molecule DNA/RNA sensor for gene expression analysis.
Simon, who has a Marie Curie Doctoral Fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory, received a certificate and £500 at the conference at the end of October.
He said: “Receiving this recognition for my work has been incredibly motivating, highlighting its significance and the interest it has generated among fellow researchers.
“In Cambridge’s high-performance environment, it’s easy to forget sometimes how impactful and relevant our research truly is.”
Published: 15/1/2025