Nana Asante Asamoah-Danso

Nana Asante is a full-time Bioengineering Laboratory Support Technician in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. In January 2025, he successfully achieved the Royal Society of Biology's Registered Scientist (RSci) professional recognition accreditation, and in April 2025 he was officially added onto the RSci professional register. In January 2024, he became officially elected as a Member of the Royal Society of Biology. In June 2024, he won the London Science Museum's Innovation Award, as part of the Technicians Volunteer team, for bringing innovation to a role or department. In August 2023, he was acknowledged as one of the Gatsby Technicians who achieved the prestigious 2023 Royal Society Hauksbee Award for his efforts and contributions towards the Gatsby Technicians: We Make the Difference campaign and the London Science Museum's Technicians Gallery project. In July 2023, he achieved an Imperial Staff Recognition Award for representing Imperial as part of the London Science Museum's Technicians Gallery Live Programme. He previously accomplished direct research support duties for the Department of Bioengineering Synthetic Biology research laboratories from November 2019 until February 2024. In February 2023, he completed a 14-month Bioengineering Core Facilities Laboratory Technician secondment where he led and oversaw the Genomics, Microbiology and Histology laboratory facilities and PPMS Bioengineering management systems. Also in February 2023, he became an Arkwright Engineering Scholarships Mentor to encourage and support the future leaders in Engineering. He currently guides, advises, and supports his assigned Arkwright Scholar student throughout their school studies. Since September 2022, he has been representing Imperial as a Gatsby Technician at the London Science Museum's Technicians Gallery where he co-created and developed a 40-minute career-focused live activity workshop project to deliver inside the Technicians Gallery for secondary school student groups and museum visitors with the aim of inspiring the next generation of aspiring Technicians. In March 2021, he completed a 3-month Bioengineering Teaching Technician secondment, in which he supported the teaching of laboratory skills and techniques towards students for the Molecular Bioengineering course modules. In spring/summer 2020, he served as a volunteer in the NHS COVID-19 Face-shield assembly project at the Imperial College Translation & Innovation Hub and exceeded the production target of 50,000 face-shields for the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. In September 2020, he received a Bioengineering COVID-19 award, and shared the Bioengineering COVID-19 Technical Team award for his efforts throughout the pandemic. He previously worked as a Laboratory Technician in the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College where he accomplished a range of technical support for the research undertaken within the Myocardial Function Division, supporting several teams spread across three floors. During his BSc (Biochemistry, honours) research project at the University of Westminster he studied wild-type Trichomonas vaginalis DNA ligase binding activity to understand its oligomerisation state (monomer or a dimer) in the presence of a blunt-ended double-stranded DNA substrate. He achieved synthesis and purification of recombinant T. vaginalis DNA ligase and developed a novel native gel shift assay to determine the oligomerisation states of the DNA ligase and a wild-type Paramecium bursaria Chlorella virus 1 DNA ligase. As a dedicated Bioengineering Laboratory Support Technician at Imperial College London, he currently leads the management of the Histology facility, Utility facility and the departmental laboratory coat laundry services, , and assists other departmental technicians, researchers, and students in their laboratory research activities. His duties and responsibilities include: Core facilities Inducting new departmental scientists and students into the Histology facility and Utility facility; Managing the Histology facility PPMS booking systems; Overseeing the organisation of the Histology facility and Utility facility instruments and generating iProcurement purchase orders for laboratory consumables; Renewing core facility service contracts, and scheduling contractor visits to install, service and repair laboratory instruments; Inducting new Bioengineering members onto the Freeze dryer instrument; Achieving high-standards of laboratory organisation; Arranging annual service engineer visits for departmental water purification machines; Updating the Histology facility, Utility facility and Freezer room wiki pages and laboratory safety signages, and assisting with core facility webpage updates; Supporting technical colleagues with laboratory infrastructure projects, and laboratory instrument and furniture transfers. Departmental services Autoclaving chemical solutions, laboratory equipment, and biohazardous waste; Receiving departmental chemical waste and delivering into the Safety Store; Managing the departmental laboratory coat laundry services; Maintaining an efficient stock of laboratory supplies and PPE; Recycling empty chemical bottles and micropipette racks, and arranging defective laboratory instrument collections and hazardous chemical waste disposal. For more information please visit: Department of Bioengineering: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/bioengineering/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/bioengineering/people/professional-services-technical-and-operations-staff/ https://blogs.imperial.ac.uk/imperial-people/2021/08/02/nana-asante-asamoah-danso-bioengineering-core-facilities-laboratory-technician-department-of-bioengineering/: https://blogs.imperial.ac.uk/imperial-people/2021/08/02/nana-asante-asamoah-danso-bioengineering-core-facilities-laboratory-technician-department-of-bioengineering/ https://jobs.newscientist.com/en-gb/article/what-does-a-laboratory-technician-do-/: https://jobs.newscientist.com/en-gb/article/what-does-a-laboratory-technician-do-/ https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/awards/Hauksbee-award/: https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/awards/Hauksbee-award/ https://usjobs.newscientist.com/article/what-does-a-laboratory-technician-do-: https://usjobs.newscientist.com/article/what-does-a-laboratory-technician-do- https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/203573/staff-awarded-their-efforts-with-bioengineering/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/245693/engineering-community-celebrated-2023-staff-recognition/ https://www.technicians.org.uk/stories/nana-asante-asamoah-danso/: https://www.technicians.org.uk/stories/nana-asante-asamoah-danso/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/253095/royal-society-success-imperial-technician/ https://www.newscientist.com/nsj/article/what-does-a-bioengineering-laboratory-support-technician-do- https://usjobs.newscientist.com/article/what-does-a-bioengineering-laboratory-support-technician-do-

• Faculty of Engineering