Four years of hard work has finally paid off!

Congratulations to David Schmidl who passed his PhD viva on October 7th.  His examiners were Tom Brown, Professor of Nucleic Acid Chemistry from University of Oxford and Julian Willis who is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Biology here at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.

As David originates from Germany, it was only right to present him with a traditional German PhD crafted hat.  Based on a mortarboard, group members crafted the hat to include memorable pictures of David’s time in the group and decorated it with a number of different items ranging from a Bavarian hat, saved from a visit to a local Oktoberfest, to Eppendorf tubes and other lab consumables he would have used in his projects (clean and unused ones, of course!). As you can see from the photo, David is very happy with his new hat!

David joined the group during the Covid pandemic in October 2020 after finishing his undergraduate and Master’s studies in Chemistry and Biochemistry at LMU Munich, Germany.  His interest in chemical biology and the epigenetics of modified DNA bases led him to work on the development of a novel conceptual approach to the sequencing of modified cytosines via a modification-specific unnatural base pair.  Additionally, he was involved in a project about enzymatic de novo DNA synthesis.  He enjoyed addressing the problems and challenges that came with these projects.

David will be staying on in the group for a few months as a postdoctoral research associate and is looking forward to building on his experience with epigenetics, nucleic acid sequencing and molecular biology together with his passion for teaching.  He then hopes to move onto a postdoctoral position back in Germany.