Professor Emma Whitelaw honoured

QIMR’s Professor Emma Whitelaw has been presented with the Australia and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology President’s Medal.

The award is intended to recognise excellence and accomplishment in cell and developmental biology and is the highest honour awarded by the society.

“I hope that my winning of the award encourages young scientists to keep doing what they love – experiments! It is a tough career choice and it always has been, but with great rewards. When I look back to my early days, I remember how disheartened I often was. Even if you decide to opt out at some point, you have had the opportunity to be creative, to dream, at least for a while,” said Professor Whitelaw.

This award recognises Professor Whitelaw’s ground breaking contribution to the discovery of the epigenetic regulation of inheritance. Epigenetics is the study of mechanisms which modify DNA structure in subtle ways, and thus change gene expression, without influencing the DNA base sequence. Her work has far reaching implications for how we understand both the regulation of transcription and the very meaning of biological inheritance.

Professor Whitelaw received the award and delivered the ANZSCDB President’s Medal Lecture at OzBio2010 on Wednesday 29 September at 9:00 am in Plenary Hall 2 of the Melbourne Convention Centre.