Biographies Heirloom Carriers 2012-2014

heirloom carriers 2012-2014

Bianca Acevedo is Senior Research Scientist at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She received her degree in Psychology (magna cum laude) at New York University in 2000, and completed a PhD in Psychology at Stony Brook University, New York in 2008. Bianca became a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, University of California and Weill Cornell Medical College from 2008 to 2013. She worked as a Research Scientist and Instructor at the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, from 2012 to 2013. Bianca received an International Woman in Science Award in 2012.

Tracey Barrett is Senior Lecturer in Structural Biology at the School of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, University of London. She read Molecular Biophysics at the University of Leeds before completing a DPhil in Chemistry from the University of York. From 1995 to 1998 she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at MRC National Institute for Medical Research and University College London. She was awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Career Development Research Fellow from 1998 to 2003.

Georgina Ferry is a science writer, author and broadcaster based in Oxford. Inspired by the life and career of Britain’s only female Nobel prizewinning scientist, she wrote the biography Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life (1998; reissued by Bloomsbury Reader, 2014). Three further books, including a biography of the Nobel prizewinner Max Perutz, have since appeared, and she wrote and produced a play, Hidden Glory, to mark Hodgkin’s centenary in 2010. Georgina edited the Oxford University alumni magazine, Oxford Today, from 2000-2007, and is deputy chair of the trustees of Science Oxford. She has two grown-up sons.

Edith Heard is Director of the Genetics and Developmental Biology Department at the Institut Curie, Paris, and Chair of Epigenetics and Cellular Memory at the Collège de France. She received a Natural Sciences degree from Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, in 1986, and completed her PhD in Cancer Research at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratory, London, in 1990. She was elected EMBO membership in 2005, and was awarded the Prix Jean Hamburger in 2009 and the Grand Prix de la FRM in 2011. Edith was made Fellow of the Royal Society in 2013, noted for studies of X chromosome inactivation.

Emily Holmes is a practising clinical and experimental psychologist, programme leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, Guest Professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Visiting Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford. After receiving a degree in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford in 1993, Emily completed an MA in Social Sciences at Uppsala University in Sweden. She did a doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Royal Holloway, University of London, from 1997 to 2000. She completed a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, from 2002 to 2005. She has received numerous awards, most recently the American Psychological Association award for distinguished early career contributions to psychology (2014). Her daughter is age five.

Dame Louise Johnson read Physics at University College London before completing a PhD in Biophysics at the Royal Institution in 1965. The following year, she moved to work as postdoctoral researcher at Yale and then took up post as departmental demonstrator in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University. Louise was appointed University Lecturer and Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford University, in 1973, and David Phillips Professor in Molecular Biophysics at the University of Oxford from 1990 to 2007. She became Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Professorial Fellow at Corpus Christ College in 1991. From 2008 to 2012 she was Emeritus Fellow Corpus Christi College, Oxford University. She was awarded a DBE, becoming a Dame of the British Empire, in 2003. Louise died in 2012.

heirloom carriers 2012-2014

Elizabeth Murchison is Reader in Comparative Oncology and Genetics at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, which she joined in 2013. Elizabeth grew up in Tasmania, Australia, and studied Biomedical Science at the University of Melbourne. She moved to New York to do her PhD at Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in 2007, and returned to Australia the following year for postdoctoral studies at the Australian National University. From 2009 to 2013 Elizabeth took up an Australian government fellowship at the Cancer Genetics and Genomics Group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK. She was awarded L’Oréal-UNESCO UK and Ireland For Women In Science Fellowship in 2009, the Eppendorf Award for Young Investigators in 2012 and the Genetics Society Balfour Lecture in 2014.

Marysia Placzek is Professor in Developmental Neurobiology and Director of the Bateson Centre at the University of Sheffield. She graduated in Molecular Biology at Edinburgh University in 1982, and went on to complete a PhD on mammary tumour development at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London (CRUK). She then undertook postdoctoral training in Developmental Neurobiology at Columbia University, New York, and in 1992 set up an independent lab at the National Institute for Medical Research, London. In 1997, she moved to the Department of Biomedical Science at the University of Sheffield, where she was appointed Chair of Developmental Neurobiology laboratory in 1999. In 2007, she was made Deputy of the MRC Centre for Developmental and Biomedical Genetics, was Acting Director from 2009 to 2013.

Christiana Ruhrberg is Professor of Neuronal and Vascular Biology at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London. She received her Diploma, Justus-Liebig-Universitat Giessen, Germany, in 1992, and won Young Cell Biologist of the Year from the British Society for Cell Biology in 1996. Christiana received a PhD in Biochemistry at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in 1997. She received a Werner-Risau-Prize for outstanding contributions to endothelial cell biology, German Society for Cell Biology in 2003, and an MRC Career Development Award from 2003 to 2007. Christiana was appointed Lecturer at University College London in 2007, Reader the following year, and Professor of Neuronal and Vascular Biology in 2011. That year she received a Junior Investigator Award, Wellcome Trust.

Nicole Soranzo is Group Leader in Human Genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Principal of Research at the Haematology Department, University of Cambridge

Nicole graduated in Biological Sciences at the University of Milan, Italy, and conducted her PhD in Genetics, focusing on population and evolutionary genetics, at the University of Dundee. She completed her postdoctoral training in human population and statistical genetics at University College London and joined the Pharmacogenomics Department at Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development in the US in 2005. Since 2007, she has been at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and began leading her own team in 2009.

Sarah Teichmann is Joint Group Leader at the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Since 2005, she has been a Fellow and Director of Studies at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. In 2013, she was appointed Principle Research Associate of the Department of Physics and the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. Sarah completed her PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 2000 and was awarded a Beit Memorial Fellowship University College London from 2000 to 2001. She was Trinity College Junior Research Fellow from 1999 to 2005 and MRC Programme Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology from 2001 to 2013. In 2012, Sarah was elected to EMBO membership. She has received numerous awards, most recently the Michael & Kate Baranyi Award 2014.

Produced by the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre

www.csc.mrc.ac.uk

Design - Emma Bornebroek Text - Nick Kennedy Text Editor - Almut Caspary Artist Sketches - Fiona Perkins

In addition to all of the women scientists who contributed to this publication, we would like to thank: Professor Amanda Fisher (Director, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre), who inspired all aspects of this project to commemorate women in science; Vivienne Parry for conceiving of science heirlooms (jewellery); L’Oréal UK & Ireland for their support of the project; BA design students Benita Gikaite and Anya Malhotra from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design for creating Jewellery designs; Martin Baker for making the jewellery