Professor Andrea Brand FMedSci FRS and Professor David Klenerman FMedSCi FRS have been awarded Royal Society Research Professorships.
These prestigious posts usually run for up to ten years and provide long-term support for internationally recognised scientists of exceptional accomplishments from a range of diverse areas including biochemistry, genetics, chemistry, developmental biology and physics.
Professor Andrea Brand FMedSci FRS from the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute and the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience has received the Royal Society Darwin Professorship. Professor Brand’s research focuses on development of the nervous system, identifying the genes that direct the specific behaviours of cells in the brain. Her main interest is on how the environment influences neural stem cell behaviour, and how nutrition regulates neural stem cell dormancy and growth.
Discovering treatments that can stimulate the survival and rapid reproduction of internal neural stem cells could have the potential to be used as therapies for disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy and strokes.
Professor David Klenerman FMedSCi FRS from the Department of Chemistry has received the Royal Society GSK Research Professorship. Professor Klenerman is known for co-inventing Illumina sequencing (a high-speed DNA sequencing method). His research is focused on developing and applying new biophysical methods, based on laser fluorescence spectroscopy and scanning probe microscopy. Professor Klenerman has developed techniques to image individual protein complexes on the surface of living cells to follow the processes occurring as the adaptive immune response is triggered. These methods are now being used to study neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
They join four other world class scientists awarded the Royal Society Research Professorships. The full list of recipients and further information can be found here.
Commenting on the appointments, John Skehel, Biological secretary and a Vice President of the Royal Society, said:
“The scientists awarded the 2016 Research Professorships are amongst the world’s most distinguished. All six have already made outstanding contributions to science and society and we hope that the professorships will support their current projects, as well as opening up new opportunities to enable them to continue their exceptional work.”