Royal Medal Honours for top Professors

Three leading Professors at the University have celebrated a summer of success after being awarded prestigious Royal Medals.

Sir Philip Cohen FRS, FRSE, Director of the Medical Research Council's Protein Phosphorylation Unit within the College of Life Sciences and Director of the newly established Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling, has been awarded a Royal Medal by the Royal Society.

The Royal Medal is awarded annually by the Royal Society in recognition of the profound implications an individual's research findings have for others, and has been granted this year to Professor Cohen for his contribution to our understanding of the role of protein phosphorylation in cell regulation.

Protein phosphorylation is a control mechanism in cells, and abnormalities in the mechanism are a cause or consequence of many serious conditions including cancer, diabetes and inflammatory disease.

Professor Roger Fletcher FRS, FRSE, a mathematician within the College of Art, Science and Engineering and scientist Sir David Lane FRS, FRSE, Deputy Head of the Division of Molecular Medicine have both been awarded Royal Medals by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Professor Fletcher received his award for his outstanding contribution to mathematics and software development and Professor Lane for his outstanding contribution to cancer research through his discovery of the P53 tumour suppressor gene.

Professor Cohen's Royal Medal is the latest in an impressive list of 37 different honours awarded throughout his career including degrees, fellowships, awards and medals.

In the last three years alone, Professor Cohen has received the Queen's Anniversary Award for Higher Education, the Rolf Luft Prize (Sweden) and the Debrecen Award for Molecular Medicine (Hungary), and next year he will receive the Achievement Award of the Society for Biomolecular Sciences.

His success also builds on an already impressive year for the MRS Protein Phosphorylation Unit with three members of staff also receiving prestigious awards.

'I am delighted to have received this honour which is only awarded to one scientist in the UK biological sciences community each year,' said Professor Cohen.

'Coming so soon after my recent election to the US National Academy of Sciences, this has been quite a year for the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit at Dundee - Dario Alessi was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society, John Rouse received the Colworth Medal of the Biochemical Society and Kei Sakamoto was honoured with the Young Investigator Award of the American Physiological Society.'

Only three Royal Medals are awarded each year, for the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge: one in the physical sciences, one in biological sciences, and the third in applied sciences. The Nobel prize winners Frederick Sanger, Max Perutz and Francis Crick, among others, have all received Royal Medals during the medal's rich history.

The Royal Medals awarded to Professor Fletcher and Professor Lane by the Royal Society of Edinburgh were instituted by The Queen in 2000 and are awarded annually, to individuals who achieved distinction and are of international repute in Life Sciences, Physical and Engineering Sciences as well as Humanities and Social Sciences, Business and Commerce.

'I am delighted, on behalf of the team in Dundee to accept this award,' said Professor Lane. 'It is really a great honour for us to be recognised in this way for the effort we have all put in to trying to develop new treatments for cancer and promote science and scientific enterprise here in Scotland.'

The RSE honour coincides with David Lane's return to Dundee earlier this year where, along with his wife Professor Birgit Lane, he formed the Division of Molecular Medicine a new Division held jointly between the College of Life Sciences and the College of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing.

Professor Fletcher, a world-renowned figure in numerical analysis, applied mathematics and operational research, said he too was 'delighted and very honoured' to be awarded a Royal Medal.

'It's a great pleasure to receive the award along with David Lane, especially in view of the relocation of Mathematics to the Medical Sciences Institute and the various common interests of mathematics and life sciences. I'm also very pleased that the award will continue to underline the high profile of Mathematics at the University of Dundee. It is quite a coup for the University to receive two Royal Medals in one year.'