We recently celebrated the graduation of former PhD student Nathan Wu, who has now moved on to a job at Heriot-Watt University.

Nathan's PhD project focused on the use of DNA nanotechnology for the detection of circulating tumour (ct) DNA as a marker of cancer progression. His work was co-funded by Bristol Myers Squibb and the Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering (SRPe). Despite the COVID pandemic, which hit in the first year of his PhD, Nathan's project has been a great success. At an early stage he completed a rigorous systematic review on the use of nanotechology for ctDNA analysis (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9737698), with co-authors including industrial supervisors Ines Gonzalez Garcia and Remco Loos. Further fascinating papers are in preparation on the novel research that Nathan carried out, and we look forward to sharing them with the community in due course. 

During his PhD Nathan developed a wide range of skills and in his final year he won the first prize in the SRPe Industry Doctorate Poster competition held as part of their annual conference 2023. Having passed his viva in April 2024 with minor thesis corrections required, Nathan took part in a formal graduation ceremony in November. He is now a research associate at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

We wish Nathan the very best of luck in his future career!
 

Photos show Nathan and Katherine at the November 2024 graduation ceremony.