Submitted by J. Grosse on Thu, 16/11/2023 - 14:41
CIMR is delighted to welcome two new PIs to the Institute, Dr Melissa Gammons and Dr Jonathon Nixon-Abell, both of whom have been awarded prestigious Wellcome Career Development Awards.
Dr Nixon-Abell's work is focussed on identifying the cellular machinery and mechanisms responsible for orchestrating communication between organelles. The goal is to unravel how these factors enable neurons to function properly and understand what goes awry during neurodegenerative disease.
He says “I’m incredibly happy and honoured to receive the Wellcome CDA. The opportunities provided by this award are going to enable our team to push forward some really exciting science and I’m thrilled to be starting out this journey at CIMR! The institute were incredibly helpful throughout my CDA application and undoubtably played a major role in my success… I’m really looking forward to setting up my group in such a supportive environment, alongside brilliant colleagues”.
Dr Gammons joins CIMR from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and will be continuing her research on Wnt signalling. These are a collection of signalling pathways that regulate a diverse array of cellular processes including cell proliferation, differentiation, migration and polarity. She will also investigate how misregulation of Wnt signalling, by abnormal expression and/or mutations cause rare genetic diseases, such as the skeletal dysplasia Robinow Syndrome and related disorders.
CIMR Director Prof Julian Rayner acknowledged the dedication needed to be granted these awards, saying “this fantastic outcome is the result of a huge amount of dedication and work both during the application process, but also in the years before as they developed their innovative ideas and generated the critical supporting evidence for their applications. We’re hugely proud of them both.”