Awards to WCAIR members

Knighthood for Professor Mike Ferguson

Professor Mike Ferguson, Regius Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee received a knighthood in the 2019 New Year’s Honours list On receiving his award Prof Ferguson said “I am thrilled to receive this great honour, but minded immediately that it recognises the efforts of many at the University of Dundee – my home for 30 years and an institution where collaboration and cooperation are truly valued, and where advancing knowledge into solutions is highly-prized Together, we have managed to build in Dundee a truly world-class environment for science, and I feel very privileged to have been able to contribute to that. I am particularly grateful to my life- and science-partner, Dr Lucia Güther, and my family for support of every kind ”

Dr Mattie Christine Pawlowic recognised as a leading Early Career Researcher

Dr Pawlowic has had a winning start to her career at WCAIR At the end of 2018 Mattie won a prestigious Sir Henry Dale Fellowship from Wellcome and the Royal Society In April 2019 Dr Pawlowic won the inaugural British Society of Parasitology’s President’s medal This is awarded annually to an outstanding early-career researcher who has produced international-quality research and demonstrates the potential to become a world leader in parasitology Dr Pawlowic’s continued impact as a research leader and mentor has been recognised by two awards. Mattie is the 2023 recipient of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s (RSE) Dame Anne McLaren Medal in Life Sciences, which will be awarded in November. Mattie is also the recipient of a Biochemical Society Early Career Researcher Award for 2024.

Dr Pawlowic’s research focuses on how the parasite Cryptosporidium protects itself from destruction, particularly a protective outer shell that makes it resistant to low-cost water treatment The models developed by the Pawlowic group and their research into the life cycle of Cryptosporidium are a key component of the drug discovery programme for cryptosporidiosis led by the DDU and carried out in collaboration with the Pawlowic lab

William Trager award for Professor David Horn

WCAIR Deputy Director (and Interim Director 2022– 23) Prof David Horn received the William Trager award at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

The award recognised the breakthroughs Prof. Horn has made in understanding the basic biology of parasites which has unlocked new areas of research The award committee hailed Professor Horn’s “transformative work, significant for both its fundamental and translational impact” The world leading research of David Horn and his group was also recognised through the receipt of a £2.1 million Wellcome Investigator award in 2019

C.A. Wright Memorial Medal for Dr Susan Wyllie

In 2023 Dr Susan Wyllie was awarded the prestigious C A Wright Memorial Medal from the British Society for Parasitology in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the discipline Dr Wyllie is a Principal Investigator and head of the Mode of Action Group in the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research in the School of Life Sciences, with more than twenty years of experience studying kinetoplastid biology. Her studies have predominantly focused on deciphering drug mechanism(s) of action and mechanisms of drug resistance – in particular in Leishmania, the causative agent of visceral leishmaniasis

David Horn said “Congratulations to Susan on this well-deserved award, and particularly for the truly transformative target identification work she and her team have delivered Target identification yields important chemical biology insights, and Susan’s work has had a huge impact on how anti-infective drug discovery projects are progressed, and also on key decisions to register compounds for clinical trials ”

In 2018, Susan’s team was awarded GlaxoSmithKline’s Annual Scientific Termination of Projects (STOP) Award The team showed that a compound series killed the parasites by a mechanism that had potential to damage human cells Dr Susan Wyllie explained “Although it sounds negative, it’s a huge positive because identifying compound series that are not likely to be successful in the drug discovery process means we can divert much-needed resources into the development of more promising compounds.”

DDU Malaria team win MMV Project of the Year 2018

The Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) prize is awarded annually to the scientific partners involved in that year’s most exciting project from the MMV portfolio The 2018 prize was awarded to the DDU Malaria team led by Prof Ian Gilbert, Prof Kevin Read and Dr Beatriz Baragaña The team are developing compounds to inhibit an enzyme involved in protein synthesis

“The Dundee team was awarded MMV Project of the Year 2018 as their work with MMV really represents a step forward from business-as-usual drug discovery,” said Dr Timothy Wells, MMV’s Chief Scientific Officer “Having a greater understanding of the structure of the drug target has been like shining a bright light on the work to optimise the drug series – it means we can be really precise as we improve the selectivity and potency of the compounds.”

Professor David Gray honoured in HM Queen’s birthday honours 2021

David Gray, Head of Biology and Professor of Translational Biology at the University’s Drug Discovery Unit, has been given a British Empire Medal (BEM) for services to the Delivery of Testing during the Covid-19 pandemic

Prof Gray helped establish Scotland’s central Covid-19 testing facility, Glasgow Lighthouse Laboratory, in support of the national response to the coronavirus pandemic He had an integral role in the design and implementation of the Scottish testing centre, and also advised on operating procedures.

Prof Gray said, “This honour belongs to the entire amazing Glasgow Lighthouse team It has been a privilege for me to work with them in delivering high quality and high throughput Covid diagnostic testing. I am grateful to them and for the support that my colleagues at Dundee have given me. However, the biggest thank you must go to my wife, Nicola She kept our family fed, educated and mostly smiling, giving me time to be able to contribute to the testing centre She is the one that deserves a medal ”

Glasgow’s Lighthouse Laboratory also won the Knowledge Exchange/Transfer Initiative of the Year trophy at the seventeenth annual Times Higher Education (THE) Awards in 2021

Professor Ian Gilbert elected as fellow of prestigious scientific Societies

WCAIR’s new Director, Prof Ian Gilbert, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2020 and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021. At the time Prof. Gilbert was Head of Chemistry in the DDU which he helped establish in 2006 As a medicinal chemist, Ian’s research interests are primarily in the design and synthesis of potential drugs with a particular focus on infectious diseases which affect Low- and Middle-Income Countries such as malaria and visceral leishmaniasis. He is also interested in novel approaches to drug discovery and studies to understand the mode of action of biologically active compounds In October 2022 Prof Gilbert become Head of the DDU

Dr Joana Faria

Dr Joana Faria was a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab of Professor David Horn. Joana’s research focuses on understanding how african trypanosomes (parasites responsible for African Sleeping Sickness) try and avoid detection by the human immune system Dr Faria left WCAIR in 2021 to set up her own laboratory at the University of York after she successfully obtained a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship

While at WCAIR Dr Faria’s research on the control of monogenic expression of variant surface glycoproteins on the surface of Trypanosoma brucei was recognised by Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA) Early Career Researcher award 2020 in the Development and Regulation category. Also, in 2020 Joana won an award for her research talk at the Genetics Society of America’s Molecular Parasitology Meeting XXI. As part of her research Joana captured beautiful microscope images of the trypanosomes. The image she entitled ‘The VEX’ed Trypanaosome’ earnt her a finalist place in the Infectious Diseases Hub photograph competition in 2019.

Joana’s promise as a future leader was recognised by the award of the Wellcome-Beit prize. The prize is awarded by Wellcome to their most promising fellows who are starting to lead their own independent research programmes Joana was considered while interviewing for her Sir Henry Dale Fellowship Joana also won the British Society for Parasitology’s President’s medal in 2022

Biochemical Society Awards 2024

Two WCAIR individuals and a WCAIR team have won awards from the Biochemical Society Dr Mattie Pawlowic has won an Early Career Researcher award and Prof Sir Mike Ferguson has been invited to deliver the Morton Lecture for outstanding contribution to lipid biochemistry The DDU-GSK Kinetoplastid Drug Discovery Team led by Dr Manu De Rycker and Dr Tim Miles have won the Industry & Academic Collaboration Award

Dr Manu De Rycker said, “It is great recognition of a truly integrated industry-academia collaboration that has delivered multiple clinical candidates for neglected tropical diseases The success of our collaboration is down to a brilliant group of like-minded scientists working together towards a single aim.”

The success of our collaboration is down to a brilliant group of like-minded scientists working together towards a single aim.

Dr Manu De Rycker

Public Engagement Awards

Julia Haddow (née Wcislo) was named runner-up in the Medical Research Council’s Max Perutz Science Writing Award 2020. Julia, an MRC funded PhD student in Kevin Read’s lab in the Drug Discovery Unit, received a runner-up prize of £750 for her article, ‘The game of hide-and-seek‘ Julia’s article focussed on her research to develop methods to determine the localisation of the parasite which causes Chagas disease within the body Julia said “I tried to portray the struggles and achievements I have encountered so far in an engaging, simple and humorous style The article is aimed at a non-scientific audience so that people from all backgrounds can understand what my research is about and why it matters ”

A number of the public engagement initiatives supported by WCAIR have received recognition at the School of Life Sciences annual awards The 2018 prize for Engaged Researcher was jointly shared by Lesley-Anne Pearson and Lauren Webster The Project of the Year was ‘Kirsty’s project: Search for a new medicine’ a children’s book conceived by Suzanne Duce and Tracey Baylis and illustrated by Daisy

MacGowan

In 2019 the Project of the Year was awarded to the WCAIR team who created the Medicine Maker badge for Girl Guides. The team won again in 2021 for their ongoing collaboration with Girlguiding including participation in Wander the World (2020) and hosting the Virtual Sleepover 2021

Dr Irene Hallyburton was highly commended in the engaged researcher category in 2021 for her long lasting and sustained commitment to engaging members of the public in the work of the School of Life Sciences. In 2022 Irene’s idea the WeeCAIR Medicinal Garden was highly commended in Project of the Year.

The School of Life Sciences, of which WCAIR is a part, was awarded a Gold Engage Watermark by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement in 2017 WCAIR activities also contributed to the University of Dundee Institutional Gold Engage Watermark in 2020