John Innes Foundation Student Prizes 2010

26th August 2010

The John Innes Foundation has announced the winners of the 2010 John Innes Foundation Student Prizes for Excellence in Scientific Research and Excellence in Science Communication. Part of the John Innes Centre's mission is to train scientists and to make our findings available to society, and these awards recognise achievements of PhD students in these aims. The PhD is the first step towards a career in research, and provides training for a range of opportunities. Supporting PhD studentships ensures the flow of highly trained people into scientific research.

Alex Graf’s experiments that uncovered the link between the circadian clock, carbohydrate metabolism and plant growth have been recognised with an award, as has Sebastian Marquardt’s work on RNA-mediated chromatin silencing that has relevance for gene expression studies on plants as well as in animals and fungi. "My time as a research student at the JIC was fantastic, doors were always open and I could receive a lot of support in pursuit of my developing interests" said Sebastian.

Excellence in Science Communication awards were presented to Colette Matthewman and Giulia Morieri. In particular Colette helped to set up a public event on Charles Darwin and the Beagle Project, raising awareness of biodiversity, evolution, and JIC’s work in these areas. Guilia Morieri has taken part in a vast range of science communication events, from presentations at international meetings, experiments at science festivals and working with school children of all ages. In addition she has produced an educational video on genetics.

The prizes for Excellence in Scientific Research are awarded to Alex Graf and Sebastian Marquardt

Alex used simple yet powerful experimental approaches to link several aspects of plant biology that had previously been studied separately - carbohydrate metabolism, the circadian clock and the control of plant growth and development. The result is a new perspective on the relationship between plant productivity and the diurnal cycle of photosynthesis and nocturnal starch breakdown. Alex’s results, which were published in PNAS, have opened up entirely new avenues of research which are currently being explored through new research funding to his supervisor, Alison Smith.

Sebastian used a forward genetic approach to dissect an RNA-mediated chromatin silencing pathway involved in the control of flowering time. Working with his supervisor, Caroline Dean, Sebastian was able to identify several new genetic components that link a histone demethylase activity with the co-transcriptional processing of nascent noncoding transcripts. The results, which have been published in the high-impact journals PNAS and Science, have broad relevance for understanding the control of gene expression by noncoding RNA and chromatin modification in animals, fungi and plants.

Alex joined the rotation student PhD programme at JIC in October 2005, having completed his first degree at the Martin Luther University, Germany. His PhD studentship was sponsored by the John Innes Foundation. He is now undertaking a post-doctoral position at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. Sebastian was also on the rotation PhD programme supported by the John Innes Foundation and the EU Marie Curie Programme. He joined JIC from the Max Planck Institute, Cologne and is continuing his research career at Harvard Medical School.

The prizes for Excellence in Science Communication have been awarded to Colette Matthewman and Giulia Morieri

Colette has been very active and successful in Science Communication both within the scientific community and in outreach to the general public. She has made presentations of her work at four international science meetings. In her outreach activities she took part in a science day at JIC and was also on a “question and answer” panel about being a woman in science, following the “Blooming Snapdragons” play. Her greatest contribution was organisation of the “Voyage of the Beagle: A Day of Scientific Exploration”, together with the JIC Communications team. Using Darwin and the Beagle Project as inspiration, the event aimed to raise awareness of the themes of evolution and biodiversity and demonstrate the contribution of JIC to these areas. This one-day event involved a daytime session with students from three Norfolk schools and an evening session attended by over 300 members of the public.

Giulia was also very active in communicating to both the scientific community and the lay public. She gave presentations at three international meetings, one of which she was also involved in the organisation of. In public engagement, she demonstrated a range of practical experiments, illustrating the science behind food security, to a diverse family audience at the Edinburgh International Science Festival at Easter 2010. She has also worked extensively with school children, giving presentations at four different schools in the county, at all levels from Nursery children to “A” level students. Her presentations, which have included talks on genetics and an educational video which Giulia produced in collaboration with a science teacher, have been delivered to nearly 400 school children. This wide ranging outreach activity has taken very considerable commitment and has been particularly well received by children and adults alike.

Links

John Innes Foundation Student Prizes 2010