The committee are charged with the organisation of all BRS events for the following year. The committee is made up of postgraduate students from within the School of Biotechnology and its related institutes. The committee are essential in sustaining the BRS and delivering on the excellence achieved by previous years. Massive thanks are extended to those no longer on the committee; Eoin Corcoran and Ciara Buchanan.
Helena Mylise Sørensen
Chair
Helena is a 2nd year PhD student in the Bioprocess Engineering group under the supervision of Dr. Brian Freeland, Prof. Christine Loscher and Prof. Dermot Brabazon. She is developing and optimizing a microbial bioprocess for the production of a functional food ingredient.
Martha Faulkner
Vice-Chair
Martha is a PhD student in the National Institute of Cellular Biotechnology under the supervision of Dr. Finbarr O’Sullivan, Dr. Joanne Keenan and Prof. Martin Clynes. Her research investigates the interaction of zinc with biological systems, focusing on zinc and the
skin and zinc’s role in the wound healing process.
Natalija Aleksejenko
Treasurer
Natalija is a 1st year PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Janosch Heller. She is looking at how astrocytes and endothelial cells communicate in the brain and how that changes during epilepsy.
Katie O’Rourke
Social Media Officer
Katie is a 3rd year PhD student under the supervision of Assistant Prof. Konstantinos Gkrintzalis. The objective of her project is to develop molecular tools to study the impact of active pharmaceutical ingredients on daphniids, in order to allow the timely prediction of pollution hotspots in the aquatic environment.
Niall Ashfield
Ordinary Member
Niall is a first-year PhD student in NICB under the supervision of Dr Denis Collins. His project is investigating the potential to combine tyrosine kinase inhibitors with antibody-drug conjugates in the treatment of HER2-positive cancers.
