Congratulations to PGR Pablo Martinez Pancorbo, who submitted his thesis this month and on 18th September, successfully passed his viva.
Here’s Pablo’s words on the challenges and rewards of undertaking his PhD and his time with the CDT:
My thesis is submitted just in time!
It has been four years working on this incredible research with so many complications and unknowns. But there is light at the end of the road. Neither cancer nor the coronavirus pandemic has stopped me from getting my thesis ready.
During these beautiful years, I have grown and matured beyond what I thought I could. I had memorable experiences and met wonderful people, along with obtaining exciting results and shared them in international conferences around the world. Some of my colleagues on this journey are now my closest friends. I have worked in a broad range of disciplines and regularly collaborated with physicists, chemists, engineers and biologists. I had the opportunity to be a teaching assistant in many modules which included mathematics, physics, fluids engineering and computer science, which lead me to get a teaching fellowship. Moreover, I helped to organised many events for early career scientists over the years, received serval prizes and participated in the QUEX HealthTech Hackathon. However, bad things happened too such as multiple failed experiments during my first six months, getting stuck at the airport in the Rochester (NY) during a research visit due to adverse meteorological conditions and misappropriation of the ownership of my successful grant proposal from the OSA.
I see my PhD as a time of personal growth and independent critical thinking. Thanks to the soft skills I developed in various pieces of training during this time, I managed to receive several small grants and I was awarded the JSPS postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tokyo, which (if the coronavirus travel restrictions allow) will be my next step in my research journey. I am excited and confident about implementing all I learnt in future career stages.
We congratulate Pablo on his postdoctoral fellowship and wish him the best of luck for his future.
Pablo’s achievements include:
- March 2019, 1st Prize in #RSCChemBio (Chemical and Biology Interface) at RSC Twitter Poster Competition by Royal Society of Chemistry
- March 2018, 2018 IOM3 Young Persons’ Lecture Competition South West of England and South of Wales Winner Award by The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3)
- 2018 IOM3 Young Persons’ Lecture Competition Exeter Winner by The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), February 2018.
- 2018, STEM for Britain selected presenter representing Exeter at Houses of Parliament.
Pablo presented at the following conferences and workshops:
- Poster:Organ-on-a-Chip, Current Gaps and Future Directions Conference, 2019. GSK’s Medicines Research Centre, Stevenage, United Kingdom
- Professional Youtube video: “Nanoparticles for cancer imaging and treatment – Pablo Martinez Pancorbo”, recorded by IOM3, 20th November 2019
- Poster: “In vitro human toxicity assessments of novel multifunctional nanoparticles for cancer theranostics”, GW4 3Rs Symposium, 2019
- Poster: “Imaging and Treatment of Cancer Cells with smartly Designed Magnetoplasmonic Nanoparticles”,GW4 Nanomedicine Workshop, 2019
- Poster: “Fe2O3-SiO2-Au Composite Nanoparticles for Potential Cancer Theranostics”, 14th International Conference on Materials Chemistry (MC14) 2019, Birmingham, United Kingdom
- Poster:”“Fe2O3-SiO2-Au Composite Nanoparticles for Potential Cancer Theranostics”; 6th Nano Today Conference 2019, Lisbon, Portugal
- Oral presentation; Speaker at Pint of Science 2019, Exeter, UK, May 2019
- Oral presentation: “Smartly designed composite nanoparticles for potential cancer therapy and diagnosis” as invited speaker at West of England Metals and Materials Association (WEMMA), 2018.
- Presented talk at NanoBio Conference 2018, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 2018
- Youtube video: “Elevator Pitch: Pablo Martínez Pancorbo”, 11th December 2017
- Pablo Martinez Pancorbo, Kunyapat Thummavichai, Nick Stone, Yanqiu Zhu; Poster: ‘Au-SiO2-WOx Core-Shell Nanocomposites For Biomedical Imaging Applications’, MC13 – RSC, Liverpool, UK, 25th July 2017
- Pablo Martinez Pancorbo, Kunyapat Thummavichai, Nick Stone, Yanqiu Zhu; Poster: ‘Au-SiO2-WOx Core-Shell Nanocomposites For Biomedical Imaging Applications’, Infrared workshop, Exeter, UK, 8th July 2017
- Pablo Martinez Pancorbo, Kunyapat Thummavichai, Nick Stone, Yanqiu Zhu; Poster: ‘Characterization of Nickel microarray in SEM’, MMC2017 – RSM, Manchester, UK, 7th July 2017
- Pablo Martinez Pancorbo, Kunyapat Thummavichai, Nick Stone, Yanqiu Zhu; Oral presentation: ‘Magnetic-Plasmonic Core-Shell Nanocomposites for Biomedical Imaging’, Living Systems Institute Imaging Symposium, Exeter, UK, 26th May 2017
- Pablo Martinez Pancorbo; Oral presentation: ‘Smart materials, the oncoming revolution’, IOM3 Young Persons Lecture Competition, Exeter, UK, 15th February 2017
- Pablo Martinez Pancorbo, Nick Stone, Yanqiu Zhu; Poster: ‘Au-SiO2-WOx Core-Shell Nanocomposites For Biomedical Imaging Applications’, Postgraduate Research Showcase 2017