Women in Cell Biology Award for Pleasantine Mill
Pleasantine Mill honoured with the 2019 Women in Cell Biology Early Career Medal: December 2018
Pleasantine Mill has been awarded the 2019 British Society for Cell Biology WICB Early Career Medal, established in 2015 to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the BSCB. The award celebrates early-career women who are making outstanding scientific contributions in cell biology upon establishing their own research group in the UK within the last six years.
Pleasantine joined the MRC Human Genetics Unit following PhD training in Canada. She formed her own research group in 2014 focused on understanding the role of genetic variation of mammalian cilia in a wide spectrum of clinical features in ciliopathy patients. Ciliopathies are a diverse class of human genetic diseases, with over 20 recognized syndromes caused by mutations at ~100 different loci. The Mill lab has built new resources to help to profile different disease-relevant mammalian cilia types in an unbiased and sensitive way.
Cell biology is key to understanding of diversity of the mammalian cilia repertoire and how this goes wrong in human disease. From these very basic, curiosity-driven studies we hope one day to be able to develop novel therapeutic strategies for ciliopathies. It’s a real honour to be awarded this very special WICB medal by the BSCB.
Dr Mill will be recognized during the BSCB/BSDB main spring meeting at the University of Warwick, 7th to 10th April 2019, when the medal will be awarded at a medal lecture.
Congratulations to Pleasantine Mill, PhD on this achievement!