Biography

Ruben Tomás is a first year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry focusing on "Glycocalyx Remodelling to Enable Quality by Design Cell-Based Therapy", under the supervision of Professor Matthew Gibson (supervisor; Department of Chemistry and Warwick Medical School) and Dr Daniel Mitchell (co-supervisor; Warwick Medical School).

Ruben obtained a First Class BSc degree in Forensic Science at Nottingham Trent University (2016). In the second year of his degree, Ruben completed a summer placement with Dr Liam Duffy, at Nottingham Trent University, working on the "Synthesis of Novel Antimalarial Compounds derived from the Codinaeopsin Scaffold". Following this, in Ruben's final year, he completed a project developing "Dye-Doped Silica Nanoparticles and Microparticles for Fingermark Enhancement", under the supervision of Dr Muriel Funck, for which he was awarded "Winner of the Trent Institute for Learning and Teaching Research in Undergraduate Studies Award. In recognition of having the best research project in the School of Science and Technology in 2015/2016".

Ruben joined the Molecular Analytical Science Centre for Doctoral Training (MAS-CDT) in 2016, where he obtained a Pass with Distinction. Ruben's first project was "Conquering poor resolution in fast magic angle spinning solid-state NMR spectra of noncrystallisable protein assemblies", supervised by Dr Józef Lewandowski (The University of Warwick's Solid State NMR Group, Department of Chemistry) and Dr Peter Gierth (Bruker, Industry Supervisor). Ruben presented his work in the form of an award-winning poster at the MAS-CDT Annual Conference. Ruben's second project related to "Electrochemical sensing directly in bodily fluids – a move towards point of care and in vivo analysis", supervised by Professor Julie Macpherson (Warwick Electrochemistry and Interfaces Group, Department of Chemistry) and Dr Tony Bristow (Astra Zeneca, Industry Supervisor).

Research Interests

Ruben's research interests focus on stem cell glycocalyx remodelling with macromolecules to enable the rational design of high-quality cell-based therapies and using high-resolution methoda to quantitatively evaluate these new surface.

Outreach Work

During Ruben's Master's year he was an RSC STEM ambassador and part of the Warwick Chemistry Society's outreach programme.

In addition to outreach, Ruben is a student staff liason officer for the MAS-CDT course and demonstrates various modules on the course.

Publications

1. R. M. F. Tomas, B. Martyn, T. L. Bailey and M. I. Gibson, ACS Macro Lett., 2018, 7, 1289–1294. "Engineering Cell Surfaces by Covalent Grafting of Synthetic Polymers to Metabolically-Labeled Glycans"
2. S. Richards, A. Jones, M. F. Tom and M. I. Gibson, Chem. A Eur. J., 2018, 24, 13758–13761. "Photochemical “In‐Air” Combinatorial Discovery of Antimicrobial Co‐polymers"

Presentations

Poster Presentations:

2018 - MAS-CDT Annual Conference - First Place PhD Poster Prize Winner

2017 - MAS-CDT Annual Conference - MSc Poster Prize Winner

2016 - Winner of the Trent Institute for Learning and Teaching Research in Undergraduate Studies Award.In recognition of having the best research project in the School of Science and Technology in 2015/2016

Grants and Bursaries

Ruben's PhD is fully funded by MAS-CDT and EPSRC (EP/L015307/1.).