Half Day Away

Loke CTR Half Day Away 2027

The Half Day Away is held annually, and organised by the NGFs and Loke CTR PhD students, covering the excellent research carried out across the Loke Centre. 

The event is for Loke CTR members only. Details and registration information will be shared by email.

Image of a speaker at Loke CTR Away Day 2026 overlaid with a blastocyst

Date: Friday, 21 May 2027, afternoon (exact timings to be confirmed)

Venue: The Postdoc Centre at Eddington, 105 Eddington Pl, Cambridge CB3 1AS

Confirmed speakers:

  • To be announced. Check back soon.

Organising Committee: Thomas Rawlings, Dafina Angelova, Geraldine Jowett, Isabel Marchand-Casas, Julie Tang, Courtney Nel, and Praditi Mulik

Travel and Accessibility: For directions and accessibility information, see Eddington access information (Postdoc Academy)

Parking

  • Madingley Road Park & Ride (Lansdowne Road, off Madingley Road, CB3 0EZ): free for up to 18 hours, a 5-minute walk from Eddington.
  • On-site parking is limited. Charges apply 8am–6pm, Monday to Friday. Most spaces have a 2-hour maximum stay, with no return within 1 hour.
  • Blue Badge disabled parking is available on site.

2026 Programme (Archive)

This is last year's programme, shared to give a sense of the format. Speakers and timings for 2027 will be different.

1:00–2:45pm | Session 1
Chaired by Thomas Rawlings and Natasha Cavell

  • 1:00 Welcome and housekeeping: Kathy Niakan
  • 1:15 Opening keynote: Geula Hanin, From Womb to Milk: The Mother-Offspring Unit in Early Life Metabolic Programming
  • 1:45 Katarina Harasimov, In Situ Cryo-ET of Mammalian Embryos Reveals the Structure and Function of Cytoplasmic Lattices
  • 2:00 Eleonore Ocana, Uncovering temporal regulation mechanisms in mouse diapause
  • 2:15 Networking activity, chaired by Isabel Marchand-Casas

2:45–3:00pm | Tea and coffee break

3:00–4:20pm | Session 2
Chaired by Dafina Angelova and Julie Tang

  • 3:00 Skaai Davison, Fetal Programming of Adult Cardiovascular Dysfunction: Consequences of Maternal Obesity
  • 3:15 Ashley Zubkowski, Comparative Metabolomics of Pregnancy Models in Mice, Sheep, and Humans: Identifying Homoarginine as a Key Metabolite Across Species
  • 3:30 Andreea Cristian, Impact of fetal sex on placental extracellular vesicle cargo
  • 3:45 Katie Stephens, Methods to improve the diagnosis of Group B Streptococcus carriage in pregnancy
  • 4:00 Priscilla Day-Walsh, The role of microbial second messengers on trophoblast lineage specification: Implications for pregnancy outcomes
  • 4:15 Anton Enright, Exploring non-coding RNAs and RNA modifications in gene expression control

4:20–4:30pm | Refreshment break

4:30–5:15pm | Session 3
Chaired by Dafina Angelova and Thomas Rawlings

  • 4:30 Closing keynote: Graham Burton, Decidualisation and the Great Obstetrical Syndromes
  • 5:00 Closing remarks