College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine

Catherina Becker awarded Distinguished Lecturer Medal

Professor Becker receives prestigious award and delivers lecture on regeneration of the zebrafish spinal cord.

Professor Catherina Becker is presented with the 2016 Eurolife Distinguished Lecturer medal by Professor Jordi Alberch

On Monday 9th May, Professor Catherina Becker delivered her Eurolife Distinguished Lecture entitled “Successful Regeneration of the Zebrafish Spinal Cord - Learning from the Pros" at the Queen’s Medical Research Institute.

Catherina was presented with her award by Professor Jordi Alberch from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Barcelona, current President of the Spanish Society of Neuroscience and Convener of Eurolife Steering Committee.

Distinguished lecture and prestigious award

The Eurolife Distinguished Lecture is a prestigious award made annually by the Eurolife Steering Committee. Previous award winners at Edinburgh include Professor David Porteous, Chair of Human Molecular Genetics & Medicine,who gave the 2008 Eurolife Distinguished Lecture at Trinity College Dublin.

Zebrafish and spinal cord regeneration

Catherina has been working at the University of Edinburgh since 2005 and is currently Professor for Neural Development and Regeneration and the Director of the Centre for Neuroregeneration. The Becker group use zebrafish to investigate spinal cord regeneration and mechanisms of motor neuron development and repair in motor neuron diseases.

A winning year

In March this year Catherina was awarded the Suffrage Science Award. The Suffrage Science Awards were established to commemorate, promote and unite women across science and engineering.

Eurolife

Eurolife is a consortium of eight distinguished life sciences institutions from across the EU that seeks to facilitate student exchanges, research collaboration and other links. Established in 1999, Edinburgh was one of the founding partners of Eurolife. The other Eurolife partner institutions comprise University of Dublin – Trinity College, Leiden University Medical Center, Karolinska Institutet, University Medical Center, Göttingen, Medical University of Innsbruck, Universitat de Barcelona and the University of Strasbourg.

Related Links

Find out more about the Catherina Becker Research Group

Discover more about Eurolife at Edinburgh

Learn more about theEurolife Distinguished Lecture series