PHD Scholarship: Another brain on the job

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It is with tremendous pride that we congratulate Richa Kohli on becoming the first recipient of the Robert Connor Dawes PhD Scholarship!
Richa will be working with Prof. Terry Johns and the newly established Brain Cancer Discovery Collaborative (BCDC) at Monash University. She will work on a paediatric ependymoma-based project in the attempt to identify new treatments for the disease.
The Robert Connor Dawes Fund will be fully funding Richa in this position for 3 years.
What we have learned over the past 18 months is: research takes time; research saves lives. With this scholarship, we have added another brilliant brain in Richa to the cause!

For her undergraduate studies, Richa attended the University of Delhi, which is ranked in the top five universities in India. She obtained a Bachelor of Science with honours (B.Sc.(Hons)) in biomedical science, with a distinction grade. She then successfully completed a research-based Master’s degree at the same university, with a first class grade. Richa also has an Industry Diploma in Drug Design and Patenting. Over the past five years, Richa has worked in medical publishing as an editor both in Australia and the UK.
Richa will join Prof. Terrance Johns’ laboratory in March 2015 and will work on an ependymoma-based project. In particular, she will develop new cell lines directly from ependymoma, a resource that is critically lacking around the world, and she will use these cell lines to identify new drugs for treating ependymoma. She will also work collaboratively with the Perth team of Dr Nick Gottardo, who will help her move her findings into animal models of the disease.