CBE for Professor Mike Ferguson

Professor Mike Ferguson, Dean of Research in the College of Life Sciences, was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours List for his services to science.

Professor Ferguson, who has won numerous international awards for his work on tropical diseases and has published more than 200 peer reviewed research papers, said he was delighted to be given the honour.

"I am especially grateful to the great team of people I have the privilege to work with at the University for making this possible," he said.

"I have worked here for almost 20 years and during that time I have seen our research laboratories expand and our research staff increase from around 150 to well over 700."

"It has been a privilege to play a small part in that expansion, to help shape some of our core technologies and to assist in the recruitment of outstanding colleagues to Dundee."

"If I could encapsulate what is special about being a scientist in the College of Life Sciences in Dundee, it is our outstanding and collegiate research environment, created by Professors Sir Philip Cohen and Peter Downes, the trust of the University, that allows us to make bold moves into new areas of science, and the support of the city of Dundee for the life sciences."

Professor Ferguson, who is Chair of Molecular Parasitology in the Division of Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery, was instrumental in establishing the new Drug Discovery Unit at the University.

"I am particularly excited about the Unit which was opened by Gordon Brown in January 2006," he said. "Our aim is to create new drugs for neglected diseases, in particular human African sleeping sickness that affects the very poorest in sub-Saharan Africa, and also to translate basic research into therapeutics in many other areas, including cancer and allergy."

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of London, the Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation, Professor Ferguson is known for solving the first structures of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) membrane anchors, which play an important role throughout eukaryotic biology.

His research takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the biochemistry of protozoan parasites that cause tropical diseases, particularly the trypanosomatids that cause human African Sleeping Sickness, Chagas' disease and leishmaniasis.

His work has been recognised by prizes such as the 1991 Colworth Medal of the British Biochemical Society, the 1996 Makdougall Brisbane Prize of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, the 1999 International Glycoconjugate Organisation Award and the 2006 Wright Medal of The British Society for Parasitology.

Professor Ferguson is also Director of the successful Dundee Proteomics Facility and is intimately involved with the Wyeth/Scottish Enterprise Translational Medicine Research Collaboration (TMRC).