31 December 2007

CBE for Professor Mike Ferguson

*** embargoed for use as per New Year's honours list ***

Professor Mike Ferguson, Dean of Research in the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, has been awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List.

Professor Ferguson has been honoured for his services to science.

"I am delighted and honoured to have been awarded a CBE for services to science," said Professor Ferguson. "I am especially grateful to the great team of people I have the privilege to work with at The University of Dundee for making this possible."

"I have worked at the University of Dundee for almost 20 years. 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."

"I am particularly excited about our new Drug Discovery Unit, opened by Gordon Brown in January 2006. 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."

General local info: Mike Ferguson moved to Dundee, via Manchester, London, New York and Oxford, as a lecturer in Biochemistry in 1988. He lives in the West End of Dundee with his wife Dr Lucia Güther, who is a fellow scientist, and their son John. Mike takes a keen interest in local activities and is a trustee of The Mill’s Observatory Advisory Group and The West End Tennis Club.

NOTES TO EDITORS

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Professor Michael A.J. Ferguson FRS, FRSE FMedSci
Division of Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery
College of Life Sciences
University of Dundee

Michael Ferguson obtained a BSc in Biochemistry at The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (1979) and a PhD in Biochemistry (1982) at London University. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rockefeller University, New York, with George Cross, FRS (1982-1985) and at Oxford University with Raymond Dwek, FRS (1985-1988). He took up a lectureship at The University of Dundee in 1988 and was promoted to a personal chair in Molecular Parasitology in 1994. He became Dean of Research for the College of Life Sciences at The University of Dundee in 2007.

Michael Ferguson has published over 200 peer reviewed research papers and given numerous invited lectures at Scientific Meetings around the world. He is known for solving the first structures of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) membrane anchors, which play a important roles throughout eukaryotic biology. 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. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1994), the Royal Society of London (2000), the Academy of Medical Sciences (2007) and made a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (1999).

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. He believes in the fundamental importance of working across the Biology / Chemistry interface and he has published extensively on and the design and synthesis of potential drug-leads against tropical diseases. He is particularly interested in Translational Research and, together with his colleagues, was instrumental in establishing the new Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee. He is also Director of the successful Dundee Proteomics Facility and is intimately involved with the Wyeth/Scottish Enterprise Translational Medicine Research Collaboration (TMRC).

Michael met his wife Dr Maria Lucia Sampaio Güther, a Brazilian citizen, through their mutual research interests in tropical diseases. They were married in 1992 and have one son (John Alexander), aged 12. Mike’s pastimes include astronomy, playing tennis badly and avoiding DIY and gardening.

For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk