The Lucy Cavendish Life Sciences Community provides both funding for students and a longer-term reciprocal relationship.
The College has established the Lucy Cavendish Life Sciences Community, a collaboration with local life sciences businesses, contributing to developing a broader, more diverse mix of talented students well-prepared and confident to progress to careers or research in fields including the life sciences and associated industries. The Community is made up of donors to a fund who also facilitate programme of activities.
Ultimately, this supportive collaboration will improve and enrich the mix of future employees in life sciences and encourage the brightest and the best whatever their background to work in the industry. It will benefit our businesses, the Cambridge life-science cluster and society as a whole.
The Fund aims to level the playing field for disadvantaged STEMM students – ensuring that they can continue to study, live up to their potential and get the most out of their time at Cambridge through participation in sports and societies. Requests received include:
- Living expenses (extra help for food, rent and other bills)
- Travel and conference costs
- Books, equipment and other study materials
- Access to professional mental health support
- Travel costs for hospital appointments
- Special requests for appliances for disabled students
- Sport and social clubs – fees/ kit/special arrangements for disabled students etc.
The Fund is crucial to a student body that is increasing significantly both in size and diversity.
The Programme provides engagement activities aimed at building strong, mutually beneficial relationships between the current and prospective students, the Community and the College. The College, in consultation with members of the Community, organises programme activities which include:
- Speed mentoring
- Blog post competition and hot topic debate
- Research event
- Alumni events for those working in the life sciences sector
- Careers Days for prospective students – focus on Widening Participation
- Career workshops
- Internships
- Annual dinner at College
-
Summer garden party
Community members
Astrazeneca is a global pharmaceutical company with a major UK presence. Their purpose is to push the boundaries of science to deliver life-changing medicines and share this passion with the scientific, healthcare and business communities of the UK, with Cambridge being one of the most exciting bioscience hotspots in the world.
Alchemab identifies human's naturally occurring protective antibodies by mining the antibody repertoires of individuals who are resistant to or recovered from disease. They are developing the antibodies into therapeutic products for broader use in patients who lack this protective response and are suffering from hard-to-treat diseases.
The Babraham Research Campus is one of the UK’s leading places to support early-stage bioscience enterprise and is distinct in its co-location of bioscience companies with the world leading discovery research of the Babraham Institute. The Campus is a dynamic environment within 430 acres of parkland, home to over 60 companies, 2,000 employees and 300 academic researchers. It is where discovery research and business come together with a shared scientific focus that accelerates innovation and strengthens links between academia and the commercial world.
Domainex is a multi-award winning, integrated drug discovery contract research organisation and has been setting the highest standards in drug discovery, with a particular emphasis on small molecule research, since 2001. The company works in partnership with clients from a variety of sectors including academic, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and patient foundation organisations around the world. The company is particularly interested in meeting the needs of students who have missed out on opportunities to experience the professional workplace during the pandemic.
Insmed Innovation UK Led by world-class experts in synthetic rescue, Insmed's Cambridge-based research team focusses on using whole genome assays adn human genetics to identify and pursue drug targets for genetic diseases. an approach that decodes the complexity of genetic networks to reveal new ways to treat diseases. Informed by decades of research from the laboratory of synthetic lethality pioneer Professor Sir Steve Jackson, they apply their synthetic rescue platform in an effort to correct the effects of disease mutations and ‘rescue’ cells from disease. The synthetic rescue principles being progressed are applicable across a wide range of therapeutic modalities, including small molecules, oligonucleotides, and gene therapies.
PhoreMost has developed a next-generation phenotypic screening platform called SITESEEKER® that can discern the best new targets for future therapy and crucially, how to drug them. This has the potential to significantly increase the diversity of novel therapeutics for cancer and other unmet diseases. Using this platform, PhoreMost is building a pipeline of novel drug discovery programmes addressing a range of unmet diseases.
Read the latest Life Sciences Community Newsletter here
To subscribe to this newsletter please contact enrichment@lucy.cam.ac.uk
