What began as a standard undergraduate project quickly grew into award-winning research. Thanks to the support of my supervisors, Prof Wenfeng Xia and Prof Keyoumars Ashkan, and Professor Sebastien Ourselin’s encouragement of student-led research and mentoring, we created opportunities for undergraduate students to contribute to real research. Their enthusiasm and dedication helped shape the projects beyond the coursework, leading to national recognition and strong potential for future publication.”
Feng He, PhD Student, Research Department of Surgical & Interventional Engineering
21 September 2026
MEng Biomedical Engineering students recognised at BioMedEng26
MEng students Charissa Cheong and Samia Zaman achieved success at BioMedEng26, the UK’s largest annual biomedical engineering conference. Charissa won the First Prize in the poster competition, while Samia received a Highly Commended award for her poster presentation competing alongside master’s and PhD researchers from across the UK.
Hosted by the University of Liverpool, BioMedEng26 is one of the UK's leading biomedical engineering events, attracting over 500 attendees from academia, healthcare and industry. Participants include undergraduate and postgraduate students, PhD researchers, academics, clinicians, engineers and healthcare technology professionals.
Charissa and Samia’s work grew directly from their undergraduate final-year MEng group projects that stemmed from a wider PhD project that forms part of King’s contribution to the European Research Council (ERC) EndoTheranostics Synergy project. After completing the project in April 2026, both students continued developing their research over the summer as interns in the Photons+Ultrasound Research Laboratory (PURL), presenting their findings at BioMedEng26.
EndoTheranostics aims to develop advanced imaging technologies that can help clinicians identify and assess disease more quickly and accurately during procedures. As part of this work, researchers at KCLare developing ultraviolet photoacoustic microscopy, a technique that can produce detailed images of tissue without the need for traditional chemical staining. Charissa and Samia’s projects explored how artificial intelligence can make these label-free images easier for pathologists to interpret, helping to translate cutting-edge imaging research into tools that could eventually support faster diagnosis and surgical decision-making.
Charissa investigated how AI could transform label-free tissue images into images that closely resemble conventionally stained pathology slides used by clinicians. Her work focused on developing and refining AI models that preserve important cellular and tissue features, helping pathologists interpret images more quickly and potentially speeding up diagnosis during surgery.
Samia focused on improving the quality of large AI-generated pathology images. Because large tissue samples are often processed in smaller sections, the final images can contain visible boundaries and inconsistencies. She developed techniques to create smoother, more uniform images, making them easier for clinicians to analyse and interpret.
As first author on the two award-winning conference projects, Feng He, a BMEIS PhD candidate, led the day-to-day research development and worked closely with the students throughout their projects, under the supervision of Dr Wenfeng Xia. This created a direct link between undergraduate teaching, PhD-led research mentoring and laboratory research, allowing strong projects originating within the BMEIS curriculum to develop into nationally recognised conference work.
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PhD Student
Reader in Biomedical Imaging and School Lead (International)
Assistant Principal (Innovation)
Professor of Neurosurgery