On 17th December, the Graduation Ceremony for Queen Mary University of London’s School of Medicine and Dentistry took place. A total of 41 MSc students and 3 PhD students who studied at the BCI attended the ceremony, with almost 50% of the MSc students graduating with a distinction.

Daniel Muliaditan, a student who studied the MSc Cancer & Molecular and Cellular Biology course here at the BCI, was awarded a Drapers’ Company Postgraduate Prize at the ceremony for his exceptional academic achievements.

Daniel undertook his research project in Professor Trevor Graham’s laboratory, where he studied the role of copy number alterations (CNAs) in inflammatory bowel disease-related carcinogenesis, using bioinformatics approaches. During his project, Daniel learned programming techniques in order to analyse his data, with the aim of determining which mutational processes could result in the CNA patterns he found.

Daniel said: “I am very grateful that the BCI nominated me for this prize. Winning the prize certainly gave me an extra motivation to continue to work hard in what I do.”

“I really enjoyed the atmosphere here at the BCI. Everyone is friendly and supportive, which I felt during both my taught modules and my project. I also appreciate the broad range of subjects being taught, which gives you the opportunity to develop yourself well as a cancer scientist and to find out the subject you like the most.”

Daniel is now working as a visiting worker/research technician in Dr Sarah McClelland’s laboratory at the BCI. After this, Daniel hopes to pursue a PhD in computational biology, analysing tumour heterogeneity and evolution and their roles in drug resistance.

Daniel added: “Ultimately my ambition is to become a computational biologist specializing in the analysis of cancer genomic data.”

Congratulations to Daniel and all of our students who graduated this week. We wish you all the best of luck for your future endeavours!