Like many Cambridge students, PhD candidate Odara Medagedara does a lot of juggling. As a bioengineering cell and molecular biology researcher based at the MRC Toxicology Unit and the Gurdon Institute, she has developed a multimodal workflow to harmonise two previously incompatible techniques to study diseased lung tissue. As MCR President she has been extremely active, bringing back the MCR Conference and creating the postgraduate prospectus. As well as being President, she worked as Admiral of the Punts on the MCR Committee, ensuring that the punts were in good condition all year which allowed alumni punt bookings to be re-opened. The MCR was excited to be able to share their facilities and engage with alumni in this way again. 

A confident science communicator, in the last few years she has presented at international conferences. During the first year of her PhD, she spoke at the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) in Volume Electron Microscopy 2023 in Ventura California. This talk caught the attention of the chairs of the European Microscopy vEM 2024 who invited Odara to be a speaker in Copenhagen, Denmark the following year. During GRC vEM 2023, the Chairs recommended that Odara run for chair of the 2025 Gordon Research Symposium in vEM, which she did. After winning the election, Odara spent the next two years working closely with her Co-Chair, Kara Fulton from Harvard Medical School, and the Chairs of the sister GRC vEM 2025 to organise this conference. The inaugural GRS vEM 2025 took place during the third year of Odara’s PhD, in Barcelona, Spain. 

Odara has also communicated her research in her Department’s three-minute thesis competition, for which she was a runner up, and when she supervised students from Northern Ireland during the Corpus outreach program Link Area Summer School. This year she was awarded Student of the Year at the MRC Toxicology Unit as well as a Gold Public Engagement Award for the second year. 

Odara is also sporty. She previously has rowed for the Corpus Christi College Boat Club in the  novice and W2 boats. This year she is a member of the Cambridge University Tae Kwon-Do Club. Odara has competed nationally and internationally in Tae Kwon-Do, but put this on hold during her studies due to the financial challenge of keeping up the sport. After saving enough money to overcome that challenge – and with plans to finish her PhD half a year ahead of schedule and write up her first-author publication – now is the perfect time for her to pick up Tae Kwon-Do again, re-entering the competition circuit to represent the University, starting with the British Universities and College Sport 2025. 

Born in Sri Lanka and raised mostly in North Wales, Odara did her BSc (Hons) in Biological Sciences (Development, Regeneration, and Stem Cells) at the University of Edinburgh, where she was top of her class in her final year. Although she is grateful for the opportunities that being an immigrant afforded, growing up in racist environments was sometimes challenging. She credits her drive to her background. "Being an immigrant, when push comes to shove, I will shove. It was very much drilled into me by my parents to make the absolute most of any opportunities that come your way." Perhaps that’s why she is willing and able to keep so many plates spinning at once. 

Working out a workflow 

After Edinburgh, Odara came directly to Corpus to start her PhD. For her thesis, she developed a multimodal workflow to harmonise two previously incompatible techniques – vEM and spatial transcriptomics –  in response to the challenge in analysing both cell properties and behaviours. She says, "Electron microscopy allows you to look at the sub-cellular architecture of cells at a nanometer resolution. Spatial transcriptomics allows you to infer the functional state of cells by looking at their RNA expression levels. These are two very informative techniques but they are quite incompatible."

"Studying a tissue sample with vEM will reveal its subcellular architecture and how this might be disrupted in a given condition. While you can extrapolate the molecular pathways underlying such abnormalities, the technique would benefit from being harmonised with other techniques such as histology (to orientate the larger piece the tissue being imaged by vEM), immunofluorescence (to unambiguously identify which cell types are present and the distribution of specific proteins of interest) and spatial transcriptomics (so you can infer the functional state of the cell). The challenge in bringing these techniques together lies in how the sample must be prepared for each method. So, during my PhD, I’ve been sort of stretching the limits of each method and seeing where compromises can be made so that these methods can be used in conjunction. Doing so allows for a cellular and molecular interrogation of tissue, which I’m applying to characterise the early stages of toxicant-induced fibrosis in the lung alveoli."

Executing this workflow has become a very international exercise. "I used to get samples of mouse tissue from Addenbrooke's and then that lab moved to America, so now I get the samples from America. The x-ray part of the imaging happens in Germany and also in Washington because they offer different types of x-ray imaging. When the samples come back to me, I process them some more and prepare them for vEM, which we do here in the department." Odara is also overseeing two other projects, for which samples from Canada and another US-based group, HHMI Janelia Research Campus. 

Presiding over the MCR 

Of her time as MCR President Odara says, "I was drawn to Corpus and Leckhampton because it was important to me to have a strong postgraduate community, and it's a really interesting community compared to other societies and other universities. I really like how it keeps me involved with the College even though I live out with my partner." She is especially proud that she was able to revive the MCR Conference, saying "What sets the MCR Conference apart from most academic or even student conferences is that, rather than being unified by a shared discipline or research theme, it is brought together by the community itself. As a College, one of the great privileges we have is the constant opportunity to socialise, dine, and live alongside people doing entirely different work to our own. Such an environment makes hearing snippets of each other’s research over meals or in the College bar a common occurrence. The conference gave us the chance to turn those everyday conversations into a more structured and engaging format – where we could actually hear about one another’s work in depth, and ask questions as a non-specialist but interested audience." 

She is very happy with what she has achieved over the year as MCR President, and was awarded the Ahmed Prize for her contribution. As much as she would love to run for another term, Odara feels part of a successful presidency is handing over the role to someone who is keen to take it up and can shape the community in their own way. As such, she is excited to see what the 2026 President Elect Pablo Araguas-Rodriguez (PhD Chemistry) will bring to the role in the coming year. 

What's next for Odara? She is tempted on many fronts. "I thought that throughout my PhD I would narrow down what I wanted to do, and I absolutely haven't done that. I'm keeping my options as open as possible and applying to lots of different things." She might stay in research or move into patent law - she's even open to the possibility of working in a collegiate environment. It’s a safe bet that whatever she decides is next, it will probably involve some extra curriculars as well.