Placement student, David Blaney achieves UK Life Sciences Placement of the Year award

Oxford Gene Technology (OGT), provider of innovative genetics research and biomarker solutions to advance molecular medicine, is proud to announce the achievements of placement student David Blaney. Following a nomination by the company, David earned this year’s BBSRC-sponsored Placement of the Year award. The award was part of the inaugural Cogent UK Life Science Skills Awards event, which took place on the 16^th May and saw winners take to the stage to receive awards across ten categories.

As part of his BSc (Hons) degree course in Biomedical Sciences at Leeds Metropolitan University, David spent a year with OGT, working within the computational biology group. Dr John Anson, Executive Vice President R&D at OGT, said: “At OGT, our strength is founded on the expertise of our staff. Early on, we recognised the great promise in David’s hard work and talent, and he has become a valued member of the team. We wanted to nurture these qualities even in this early phase of his career, and so nominated him for the UK Life Sciences Placement of the Year award. Recognising and encouraging the next generation of scientists is vital to ensure a successful future for the UK life science industry, which is sure to lead to many exciting and innovative discoveries.”  

Focusing on the development of RNA sequencing technologies, David’s project applied his skills as part of OGT’s cutting-edge Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) development team. His work helped to further develop OGT’s user friendly Geneffiency^TM NGS software that is provided as standard with all OGT NGS services. This software allows researchers to rapidly identify relevant results without the requirement for in-house bioinformatics resource — a common sequencing bottleneck. OGT have offered David a full-time position within the computational biology group following graduation.  

David’s award follows other award nominations for OGT, including the prestigious European MediScience Emerging Star award and Oxfordshire Business Award for Innovation. Dr Mike Evans, CEO of OGT commented: “We take great care to support and encourage each of our employees. The fact that OGT has been nominated for such prestigious awards reflects the hard work and dedication of OGT’s team, which combined with a successful business strategy, has resulted in 40% commercial revenue growth over the last 12 months.” 

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