29 April 2009

Sir Philip Cohen to receive the SBS Achievement Award

Professor Sir Philip Cohen, Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit at the University of Dundee, will today (April 29th) be presented with the Society for Biomolecular Sciences (SBS) Achievement award.

Sir Philip will receive the honour at the 15th annual conference of the Society, which is being held at the Lille Grand Palais in Lille, France.

The SBS award is presented at least every three years 'to recognize outstanding achievements in research, innovation, ground-breaking foundation or seminal contributions that have proven to be broadly applicable to biomolecular sciences or pharmaceutical/agricultural lead discovery.'

Last year's awardee was Takatada Yamada, the Director of the Gates Foundation and previously the Chairman of Research and Development at GlaxoSmithKline. Among other former winners is the Nobel Laureate Sir John Sulston.

Sir Philip will receive a commemorative plaque and an honorarium of $US 5000 before delivering a lecture entitled 'Protein Phosphorylation; my first 40 years'. He will give a second lecture at the SBS conference tomorrow on 'Targeting protein kinases for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases.'

Commenting on the award Philip said, 'It is a great honour to receive the really prestigious SBS Achievement Award. I am particularly pleased that it has taken place at the Lille Grand Palais, which I first visited 10 years ago when I came to watch my daughter Suzanne play for Scotland in the World Bridge Olympiad that was held at this venue.'

Philip flew to attend the SBS Symposium directly from Washington DC where he was inducted as a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences on the evening of April 25th. The 146th NAS annual meeting also included an address from President Barack Obama.

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