Prestigious Wolfson Research Merit Award for Professor Sue Black

Published On Fri 9 May 2014 by Roddy Isles

Professor Sue Black, of the University of Dundee, has been appointed one of 28 new Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders.

Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the scheme aims to provide universities with additional support to enable them to attract science talent from overseas and retain respected UK scientists of outstanding achievement and potential. 

The newly appointed award holders are working on a wide range of projects including radar-tracking the movement patterns of bees, assessing how polar ice sheets contribute to global sea level rise, and the development of machine learning for precision medicine.

Professor Black is Director of the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee. She is a world renowned expert in forensic anthropology. The Centre was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education 2014.

“I am honoured to have received this prestigious research award, which recognises the importance of work that we have pioneered at Dundee to assist investigations into child sexual abuse across the UK,” said Professor Black.

“This is harrowing material to work with but the success that has manifested from the court room and translated into both guilty sentences by jury and change of plea, is incredibly rewarding.  At present, over 80 per cent of our casework in this area results in a change of plea which is both an inordinate saving to the court system but more importantly protects victims from the harrowing experience of giving testimony in court.”

For more on the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification see: http://cahid.dundee.ac.uk/

The Wolfson Foundation is a grant-making charity established in 1955. Funding is given to support excellence. More information is available from www.wolfson.org.uk

For more information contact:
Roddy Isles
Head of Press
University of Dundee
Nethergate,
Dundee, DD1 4HN.
TEL: 01382 384910
MOBILE: 07800 581902
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk