In addition to designing radiochemistry experiments and building remote handling electronics, IsoSiM Ph.D. student Andrew Robertson can tell one heck of a great story.
Just ask anyone in the audience at the recent 2018 UBC Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition where Andrew took home first place and the People’s Choice award for his thesis presentation, Enabling Targeted Alpha Therapy for Treatment of Advanced Cancers.
Andrew used his three minutes to demonstrate how TRIUMF can produce the isotope actinium-225 (Ac-225), a radioactive atom that has shown immense promise as a therapy for some kinds of cancer. Globally, what small amounts of actinium that are currently produced come from decades-old nuclear weapons material, and its scarcity has stifled the pace of therapeutics research. Robertson went on to outline the work he has undertaken to show that TRIUMF has the capacity to produce actinium-225 in quantities that may potentially reshape global production and save millions of lives.
Andrew managed to squeeze the story of actinium into a concise, articulate and approachable 3-minute presentation that wowed the crowd and garnered him two awards. We can’t wait to see what he does with his other 12 minutes of fame.
Zeynab Nosrati co-awarded the 2018 Mitchell-Dwivedi Graduate Award in Pharmaceutical Sciences!