| Welcome speech | |
| Janet Thornton | |
| Academic | Career |
|
Richard Durbin Agnar Helgason Timothy Bliss |
Ottoline Leyser Tony Kouzarides |
|
Janet Thornton studied for her PhD in Biophysics at the National Institute for Medical Research, London (1970-1973) after graduating in Physics. She then moved to Oxford to work on molecular biophysics until 1978 when she returned to NIMR. Subsequently she received a Fellowship at Birkbeck College. In 1990 she was appointed Professor and Director of 'Biomolecular Structure and Modelling Unit' at UCL. In October 2001 Janet became Director of the EMBL – European Bioinformatics Institute. Among many of Janet's awards are Fellowship of the Royal Society and a Membership of EMBO (2000) and Honorary Professorship at the University of Cambridge (2003). The goal of Janet’s research is to understand biological processes on the level of protein structure and sequence. Her work involves classification of protein families and structures to elucidate the principles governing their folding, evolution and interactions. |
|
Richard Durbin received his BA in Mathematics from Cambridge University in 1982. He continued at Harvard University (Biophysics) and later at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he was awarded his PhD in July 1987. After a postdoc at Stanford University he returned to the LMB as a staff member. In 1992 he became Head of Informatics and subsequently Deputy Director at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Recently, Richard stepped down from his administrative roles to co-lead the international 1000 Genomes Project. Richard's research is concentrated on studying genetic variation. Apart from the 1000 human genomes, he is also involved in analysis of the yeast genome variation, the Ensembl, TreeFam and WormBase databases. In 2004, he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society.
|
|
|
Helgason A, Pálsson S, Guðbjartsson D, Kristjánsson þ, Stefánsson K (2008) An Association Between the Kinship and Fertility of Human Couples. Science, 319:813-816. |
Agnar Helgason graduated with an MPhil in Biological Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 1996 and with a doctorate of the same subject from the University of Oxford in 2001. In 2000 he joined deCODE Genetics where he is currently a senior research scientist in biological anthropology and population genetics as well as being an associate research professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iceland. Agnar’s research areas include the genetic history of the Icelanders and the Inuit, the use of genealogical data in population genetics, the identification of patterns of natural selection at loci associated with complex diseases and traits such as pigmentation, the impact of population structure on association studies, and statistical analyses of ancient DNA.
|
|
Timothy Bliss is head of the Division of Neurophysiology at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in London. He is noted for co-discovering Long-Term Potentiation (LTP) alongside Terje Lømo in 1973. Since then LTP has become the dominant paradigm for the neural basis of memory formation in the hippocampus, and has resulted in over 7,900 papers on the subject. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He has authored over 130 scientific publications in the field of neurophysiology. |
|
 |
Ottoline Leyser graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA and a PhD in genetics. She became Professor of Plant Developmental Genetics at the University of York in 2002, where she continues to study the role of hormones, in particular auxin, in plant shoot branching. Professor Leyser won the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award 2007 for her outstanding contributions to science – her award lecture “Thinking like a vegetable: how plants decide what to do” is available for viewing online. Professor Leyser is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation, is Chair of the BBSRC Studentships and Fellowships Strategy Panel and is on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Plant Molecular Biology.
|
|
Tony Kouzarides, deputy director of the Gurdon Institute and Royal Society Napier Professer, studied genetics at Leeds and qualified as a PhD at the University of Cambridge. Cancer has been Professor Kouzarides’ predominant interest, from doctoral research, through postdocs at the LMB and the New York University Medical Centre, to the founding of Chroma Therapeutics – a company that seeks new cancer treatments by targeting the enzymes that modify chromatin. Professor Kouzarides is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation and the Science and Strategy Advisory Group for Cancer Research UK, as well as founder and director of Abcam.
|
Kouzarides T (2007) Chromatin modifications and their function. Cell, 128:693-705. |
 |
 |
 |