Half Day Away

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 day is set up for Loke CTR Members only. Details and registration information will be shared over email. 

2026 Half Day Away

Friday, 15th May 2026, afternoon 

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

Organising Committee: Thomas Rawlings, Dafina Angelova, Ana Elisa Ribeiro Orsi, Natasha Cavell, Isabel Marchand-Casas, Julie Tang, and Courtney Nel

Travel and Accessibility

Finding Us and Accessibility | Postdoc Academy

Parking:

Madingley Road Park & Ride, Lansdowne Rd, off Madingley Road, CB3 0EZ. Free parking for drivers up to 18 hours. 5 min. walk from Eddington.

Limited parking on site. Parking charges apply 8am-6pm Monday to Friday. The majority of spaces have a maximum stay of 2 hours and no return within 1 hour. There is disabled parking on site for Blue Badge holders. (Eddington access and parking information: https://www.postdocacademy.cam.ac.uk/postdoc-centres/eddington-access-information

1:00 – 2:45

Session 1: Chaired by Thomas Rawlings and Natasha Cavell

1:00 – Kathy Niakan: Welcome and housekeeping

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 – 3:00Tea and coffee break
3:00 – 4:30

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 – 4:30Refreshment break
4:30 – 5:15

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