The John Innes Centre receives strategic funding from BBSRC
The John Innes Centre receives strategic funding from BBSRC
John Innes Centre scientist receives top international honourMay 2008 John Innes scientist Caroline Dean OBE FRS has been elected a member of the USA’s National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for her excellence in original scientific research. Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honours given to a scientist or engineer in the USA. Professor Caroline Dean will be inducted into the Academy next April during its 146th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Only 18 scientists worldwide and from all branches of science are elected as Foreign Associates each year. “This is an outstanding and well deserved recognition for her pioneering research and scientific leadership”, said JIC’s Director Professor Chris Lamb. Professor Dean’s lab has worked to uncover the way plants are able to time when they flower. Many plants, including important crops like winter wheat, need a prolonged period of cold before they will flower. This process, which is called vernalization, requires the plant to sense the cold of winter, and also remember it has been through vernalization for the rest of its life. Professor Dean’s lab has unravelled the complicated genetic and molecular controls that regulate vernalization. There are currently just over 2,000 active NAS members, only 71 of whom are from the UK. Caroline is the third John Innes Centre and Sainsbury Laboratory scientist to be elected to the NAS, reflecting the exceptional quality and impact of our front line research. Among the NAS's renowned members are the late Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, and Alexander Graham Bell. Over 180 living Academy members have won Nobel Prizes. “Professor Dean’s research on flowering time in plants has provided major new insights of relevance to the whole of biology as well as underpinning innovations to adapt our crops to changes in growing season and other consequences of global climate change” said Chris Lamb. “We are thrilled that her pioneering work has been recognised with this rare honour.” The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furthering science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Established in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences has served to "investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art" whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government. For more information, or for the full list of newly elected members, visit http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer
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