2009 UK and Ireland Winners
The winners of the four 2009 L’Oreal-UNESCO UK and Ireland Fellowships For Women In Science were announced on 1 July 2009 at an awards ceremony at the Royal Institution in London.
Dr Jennifer Bizley, University of Oxford
To undertake research on the human perception of pitch, tone and spatial location of a sound source
Dr Jennifer Bizley will use her For Women In Science Fellowship to support her research at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford. Her work will search for invariant representations of sound features in the mammalian brain.
We are able to understand speech irrespective of the accent of the speaker, pitch of their voice, or cacophony of other background sounds. The difficulty of this task, which the brain performs seemingly effortlessly, becomes apparent in listeners with hearing aids and cochlear implants, who struggle to follow conversations in noisy environments. Jennifer Bizley’s research will explore invariance in auditory coding using ferrets as a model species. Her goal is to find neurons that represent speech sounds in a way that is invariant to location, timbre or pitch. Such original work is crucial for the improved design of neuroprosthetic devices.
Jennifer Bizley read for her undergraduate degree at the University of Cambridge before moving to the University of Oxford to complete her PhD and begin her postdoctoral work. The fellowship will allow her to travel to Boston, USA to work with two leading research groups within the Hearing Research Centre at Boston University.
Dr Patricia Alireza, University College London
To undertake research on new electronic transitions under extreme conditions of pressure, magnetic field and temperature
Dr Patricia Alireza will use her For Women In Science Fellowship to support her research at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London. Her project involves high pressure research of correlated electron systems.
By tuning the electronic interactions in a solid, one can bring it from one state of matter to another – such as in the transition from an insulator to a metal or from a normal metal to a superconductor. One of the most promising tuning parameters in use is the application of pressure. Patricia Alireza’s research will use pressure and new measurement techniques to search for - and study - transitions to novel superconducting and magnetic states. This technically challenging work will further our understanding in an area of great theoretical and technological interest.
Patricia Alireza began her science career later in life, having started a family at a young age in Mexico City. Her interest in physics was sparked after reading popular science articles and she went ‘back to school’ as a mature student with a young family, first in the US and then in the UK, to complete her undergraduate and postgraduate training. The fellowship will help Dr Alireza purchase essential equipment to start a new high pressure laboratory at UCL and to continue the collaborations she has established with other institutions both in the UK and around the world.
Dr Nathalie Seddon, University of Oxford
To undertake research on the evolution of animal communication
Dr Nathalie Seddon will use her For Women In Science Fellowship to support her research at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. Her work will develop a model system for investigating the role of inter- and intra-sexual selection in signal evolution and speciation.
Animal signals play a major role in the lives of animals mediating key behaviours such as mate attraction. Current knowledge relies almost entirely on simple signals (which have a singular function) skewed sex roles (where females take care of offspring) and male displays shaped by female preferences. This is an oversimplification of things. What we know less about is how male preferences also underlie female signals, and how displays within and between both sexes are often encoded with multiple social functions. Nathalie Seddon’s work will address these complexities using the tropical antbirds as a model system. Her novel work on animal communication stands to make a strong contribution to our understanding of biodiversity.
Nathalie Seddon has spent the last few years splitting her time between life at the bench in Oxford and intensive fieldwork in the tropics of Amazonian Peru conducting studies of wild antbird populations. The fellowship will enable Dr Seddon to build on this work and develop an experimental facility at the Smithsonian Institute’s research station in Panama.
Dr Elizabeth Murchison, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
To undertake research on understanding the origins and development of transmissible cancers
Dr Elizabeth Murchison will use her For Women In Science Fellowship to support her research at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge. Her work will explore the evolution of transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils and dogs.
Cancer arises when a single cell of the body acquires genetic mutations that release it from normal cellular constraints and allow it to grow uncontrollably. Tasmanian devils and dogs are affected by cancers which have the unusual ability to be transferred between individuals. Elizabeth Murchison’s research will focus on these transmissible cancers to uncover how they have evolved as they have spread through their host populations. Her unique work has the potential not only to provide insight into mechanisms of cancer but also to have wider implications for cancer immunology, disease evolution and conservation biology.
Originally from Australia, Elizabeth Murchison completed her undergraduate degree in Melbourne and her PhD at Cold Harbor Spring Laboratory in the USA. To date, her postdoctoral studies have been split between Australia and the UK where she is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Sanger Institute. The fellowship will enable Dr Murchison to perform key sequencing runs and run validation experiments.
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UK and Ireland L'Oréal For Women In Science 2009 Fellowships
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