Academic promotions at the IGMM
August 2017: Three IGMM researchers have received promotions from the University in recognition of their work.
The IGMM would like to congratulate Professor Caroline Hayward, Dr Gregorz Kudla and Dr Kevin Myant for their academic promotions. They join six other researchers who have been promoted in the Deanery of Molecular, Genetic and Population Health Sciences this year.
Professor Caroline Hayward now holds a Personal Chair of Quantitative Trait Genetics. Prof Hayward is one of the Principal Investigators on the QTL in Health and Disease research programme at the MRC Human Genetics Unit. She has fostered collaborations with researchers across the world, and thanks to her efforts, the QTL Group is part of many large research consortia.
A Personal Chair is the highest mark of distinction for the advancement of an academic discipline, the University and student education. Amongst a long list of essential criteria to be met is ‘sustained achievement of the highest distinction’ and ‘sustained recognition in an international context’.
This is long overdue recognition of Caroline’s contribution to human population genetics, especially her role in our own Quantitative Trait Loci programme and in several large international consortia.
Dr Grzegorz Kudla, a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow at the MRC Human Genetics Unit, has been promoted to Reader. With the help of synthetic biology, next-generation sequencing and computational modelling, his research group studies how the sequence of RNA influences its structure, expression and function.
Dr Kevin Myant, a Career Development Fellow at the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre, has been promoted to Reader. His research group studies the processes that cause stem cells to transform into cancer cells. In particular, they study colorectal stem cells and have discovered that RNA splicing is a major driver of colorectal stem cell transformation. A better understanding of this process is critical for guiding the development of therapeutic approaches.
These promotions are very well deserved and highlight the great contributions that these researchers have made to science, medicine and human health.