British Parliament Conquered by Castellón Scientist

A graduate of the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) Dr Maria Jose Marin Altaba has won the SET for Britain 2014 poster competition held at the House of Commons in March 2014.

Maria won the Gold Medal Award for Chemistry and the Overall Medal across all 5 disciplines.

SET stands for Science, Engineering and Technology, and its objective is to promote Britain’s early-stage and early-career research scientists, encouraging them to continue developing the future of UK research.

Maria’s project, in collaboration with Professor Rob Field at the John Innes Centre, concerned the detection and discrimination of human and avian influenza.

Ms Marin is currently a researcher at the University of East Anglia and she presented her research in an intense 2 minute speech to dozens of politicians and a panel of expert judges as part of a poster competition. Her research on a colour-change test that uses gold nanoparticles to rapidly detect and distinguish between human and bird flu beat 29 other researchers.

SET for Britain was founded by the late Dr Eric Wharton DSc in 1997 as a vehicle for early career scientists to educate politicians and provide a platform to showcase their work in the form of a poster competition.