A postgraduate student from Newcastle, County Down, has been honoured with the Royal Society of Biology's Top Project Award for his undergraduate research on prostate cancer.

Ray Brady received the accolade at the RSB Accreditation Awards Ceremony, held in the House of Commons. The invitation was extended by Viscount Stansgate.

The award recognised Brady's dissertation on the gene fusion of TMPRSS2:ERG and its role in the tumour microenvironment of prostate cancer. He completed the project while earning a Bachelor of Biology with first-class honours at Ulster University last year.

Brady had previously won the Roch Prixe for Outstanding First Year Student and the Premier Award for Outstanding Second Year Student at the university. He is now pursuing a Master of Science in Cancer Biology and Therapeutics at Cardiff University, continuing his focus on prostate cancer and investigating a promising therapeutic drug.

He said he was driven to enter the field after seeing how cancer affects individuals and recognising the importance of research in improving diagnosis and treatment. Ulster University's Centre for Genomic Medicine, where Dr Ross Murphy supervised the project, said it was proud to see Brady building his research career.