The Nuffield Department of Medicine (NDM) awards Graduate Prizes to its graduate research students for various achievements, including success in terms of discoveries and published work, significant achievements in establishing infrastructure, success in strongly collaborative projects, and involvement in public engagement and other departmental activities.
Emma Davenport has been awarded a prestigious NDM graduate prize for the high impact and resulting publication record of her doctoral research, conducted in the Knight lab. Emma investigated the genetic determinants of variation in the human response to both common and rare infection. Her key discovery was the determination of a gene expression signature, identifying sepsis patients with an immunosuppressed phenotype associated with higher early mortality. This led to a first author publication in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. She is currently continuing her research career as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute in Professor Soumya Raychaudhuri's group. Emma is interested in how genetics can be used to understand the mechanism of action of drugs and improve the treatment of patients; the overarching strategy in developing precision medicine.