At the SEMS annual research led Industrial Liaison Forum, there was a research showcase from 80 of our current PhD students. The panel of judges this year were made up a wide range of academics from each division. They decided after a careful deliberation to award the following prizes:
1st Prize: Valeriia Kudriavtceva for a poster on "Fabrication Biocompatible Coating Enabling Drug Eluting on Demand" supervised by Prof Gleb Sukhorukov.
2nd Prize: Megan McFie for a poster on "High throughput confocal screen of 1,728 FDA approved compounds to uncover novel regulators of chrondrocyte primary cilia expression" supervised by Prof Martin Knight.
3rd Prize: Hudair Samad for a poster on "Mechanical phenotyping of human prostate cancer cells using
flow cytometry" supervised by Prof Yi Sui.
The total prize pool was this year generously sponsored by Polymax, whose CEO and founder, Rishi Nijhawan was once a research student in the Soft Matter Group of Prof James Busfield prior to starting up his successful company. Polymax supply O-Rings, Anti-Vibration Mounts, Rubber Matting and Rubber Sheeting. The students were presented with the prizes from a total prize pool of £1,000 by Julia Strudwick, the Head of Marketing at Polymax.

Updated by: James Busfield