30 April 2008

Professor Sir Philip Cohen Receives Top Scientific Honour

Professor Sir Philip Cohen, of the University of Dundee, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his excellence in original scientific research. Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honours given to a scientist or engineer in the United States.

Sir Philip will be inducted into the Academy next April during its 146th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

"I have to admit to being completely surprised by this!" said Sir Philip. "This is a great honour and a comparatively rare one for a scientist outside of the USA. As far as I am aware I am only the second person from Dundee to be elected, following Bryan Harrison at the Scottish Crop Research Institute, so it is good to be doubling the city’s representation in this prestigious body."

Sir Philip has just been named Director of the recently announced £10million Scottish Institute of Cell Signalling, which will be created at Dundee.

He was appointed to a Lectureship in Dundee in October 1971. Since then he has been a key influence in developing the College of Life Sciences from a converted stable block with 11 scientists to a complex housing almost 800 staff from 53 countries. Sir Philip was elected a Fellow of both The Royal Society of London and The Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1984, was knighted by the Queen in 1998 and has received honorary doctorates from five Universities.

He was the world's second most cited scientist from 1993-2003 in the field of Biology and Biochemistry. Sir Philip is also Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit at the University of Dundee. He has been instrumental in attracting a range of companies and world-class scientists to Dundee, as well as raising more than £35m over the past 10 years to ensure that the cutting-edge facilities in Dundee are among the best in the world.

Under Sir Philip's direction, scientists at the University have identified several new proteins that are targets for the development of new diabetes drugs.

There are currently just over 2,000 active NAS members. Among the NAS's renowned members are Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, and Alexander Graham Bell. Over 180 living Academy members have won Nobel Prizes.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furthering science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Established in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences has served to "investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art" whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government. For more information, or for the full list of newly elected members, visit http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer.

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