The LMB and the Cambridge Association for Women in Science and Engineering (AWiSE) recently held the thirteenth annual “What Next for Your Career?” event. LMB staff and visitors from across Cambridge gathered in the Max Perutz Lecture Theatre to listen to three speakers, Emma Gleave, Jenny Gallop, and Rebecca Aarons, describe life after a PhD and share advice on career development.
The LMB is delighted to announce the appointment of two new group leaders to the LMB’s Cell Biology Division: Kate McDole and Marta Shahbazi. Kate and Marta, who will take up their roles in early 2020, will join more than 50 group leaders at the LMB, who represent the diverse set of scientists recruited from around the world.
The LMB is delighted to announce that Michel Goedert from the Neurobiology Division has been awarded the Royal Society’s 2019 Royal Medal for Biological Sciences. Michel has been honoured for his work on neurodegenerative diseases, especially for identifying and characterising key molecules that form the inclusions of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
Frances Arnold will give the 2019 Francis Crick Lecture on Thursday 18th July at 4.00pm in the LMB’s Max Perutz Lecture Theatre. The title of the lecture is ‘Innovation by evolution: bringing new chemistry to life’. The event is open to anyone in the local area who is interested in attending.
LMB researchers have taken part in this year’s MRC Festival of Medical Research by hosting visits from local school students, contributing to a primary school science day, and participating in the MRC Festival Zone of “I’m a scientist, get me out of here!”. The MRC Festival of Medical Research is held annually in June as an opportunity for MRC-funded units, centres, and institutes to showcase and discuss their work through events and activities around the UK.
The LMB is delighted to announce the appointment of Kelly Nguyen as a Group Leader in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division. She will take up her post in August 2019. Kelly will be working on the mechanism of telomere maintenance. Telomeres are located at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes and play essential roles in maintaining genome stability by protecting the genome against erosion and inter-chromosomal fusion.
Garib Murshudov, a group leader in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, and Lalita Ramakrishnan, a group leader in the University of Cambridge Molecular Immunity Unit at the LMB, have been newly elected as members of EMBO.
Founded in 1964 to promote molecular biology in Europe, EMBO elects new members annually in recognition of their contributions to scientific excellence.
M. Madan Babu, a Group Leader in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, has been awarded the EMBO Gold Medal for his “fundamental contributions to the field of computational molecular biology”. Madan shares the prize with Paola Picotti at ETH Zurich.
The EMBO Gold Medal is awarded annually to scientists under 40 for outstanding contributions to the life sciences in Europe.
Michael Rossmann, Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University and former scientific staff at the LMB, where he worked with Max Perutz on the structure of haemoglobin, has died on 14th May 2019 at the age of 88. Michael was a very gifted crystallographer whose main strength was in mathematics and computer programming.
Menna Clatworthy, a Group Leader in the University of Cambridge Molecular Immunity Unit based at the LMB, has won a prestigious EFIS-IL (European Federation of Immunological Societies-Immunology Letters) Lecture Award, having been described by the nominating body as “a true clinician scientist of the 21st century – continuously pushing boundaries of biomedical insight at the interface of fundamental immunology, clinical immunology and systems precision medicine”.