Biosketch Monica Olcina:

Monica Olcina is a Group Leader in the department of Oncology, University of Oxford. She is also an Associate Research Fellow at St Hilda’s College and Course Director of the MSc in Radiation Biology.

Monica studied Pharmacy at the University of Manchester. After completing the required training to become a registered pharmacist she moved to Oxford to undertake her Masters and DPhil studies in Radiation Biology and Oncology. In 2014, she joined Stanford University where she worked as a Cancer Research Institute Irvington Postdoctoral Fellow. During this time, she identified the complement system as an important player in regulating both tumour and normal tissue responses to irradiation. In 2019 she moved to the University of Zürich to continue these studies. In December 2020, she started her independent group at the University of Oxford. Her lab is focused on understanding tumour and normal tissue microenvironment responses to injury. The Olcina group aims to use this knowledge to identify druggable tumour-specific vulnerabilities that can improve tumour response and reduce treatment-induced toxicity.