2011 UK and Ireland Winners
The winners of the four 2011 L’Oreal-UNESCO UK and Ireland Fellowships For Women In Science were announced on 28 June 2011 at an awards ceremony held at the Royal Society in London.
Dr Victoria Coker, University of Manchester
To undertake research into high-resolution mapping of the fate of toxic and radioactive metals in environmentally relevant materials
Dr Victoria Coker will use her For Women In Science Fellowship to support her research at the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester. Her work will focus on studying the fate of toxic and radioactive materials in the environment.
Key challenges facing society over the next decades include management of our environmental legacy, particularly toxic metal contamination and safe disposal of the significant global radioactive legacy. Dr Coker believes that bacteria-mineral interactions are critical to understanding these processes and the effective unravelling of these core challenges.
Some bacteria living in soils breathe metals in order to live and as a by-product of their growth, they affect the soils surrounding then, chemically changing the minerals. These geomicrobiological changes can capture or release toxic metals and radionuclides attached to minerals making these interactions vital to our understanding of environmental contamination and also to exploit potential bioremediation techniques to treat contaminants. The aim of Dr Coker’s research is to use state of the art imaging, only available in a couple of laboratories in the world, to discover the role these bacteria have in particularly arsenic and uranium toxicity in real-world environments. This will lead to a better understanding of how we might remediate against these and other toxic and radioactive metals. Ultimately, the impact of this work will be to influence policy in order to treat heavy metal contamination and to optimise management policy for arsenic and nuclear legacy materials.
Dr Victoria Coker is currently a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Manchester. This fellowship will enable her to make several trips to Canada and the USA to the two leading laboratories in Scanning Transmission X-Ray Microscopy, a technique which Dr Coker will employ to image bacteria and minerals in real world environment. Dr Coker also plans to use her award to communicate her research to a wider audience through such events as the Cheltenham Science Festival and encourage the next generation of scientists.
Dr Emily Flashman, University of Oxford
To undertake research into oxygen sensing: molecular adaptations in times of stress
Dr Emily Flashman will use her For Women in Science Fellowship to support her research at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Her work will focus on studying oxygen levels in relation to stress adaptation.
Animals respond to depleted oxygen (hypoxia) by increasing blood cell production and blood vessel growth, amongst other adaptations. This ‘hypoxic response’ is mediated by the hypoxia-inducible factor, HIF. A set of oxygen-sensing enzymes, the HIF hydroxylases, modify HIF in normal oxygen conditions, generating a signal for HIF to be degraded. These enzymes thus negatively regulate HIF activity. The HIF hydroxylases are often inhibited in cancer cells, either because of the tumour’s hypoxic environment or because they are damaged by reactive oxygen species present at increased levels in tumours. The consequent ‘hypoxic response’ can cause aggressive tumour growth. Activation of the HIF hydroxylases under these conditions is an attractive target for cancer therapy. One possible mediator of this is ascorbate, which activates the HIF hydroxylases via an unknown mechanism. Dr Flashman’s work aims to understand the molecular processes enabling one particular HIF hydroxylase, PHD2, to act as an efficient oxygen sensor. How is oxygen sensing affected by oxidising factors and how might it be manipulated by ascorbate?
Dr Emily Flashman is currently a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. This Fellowship will enable Dr Flashman to purchase a key piece of equipment to facilitate her goal of revealing how PHD2 may be pharmaceutically targeted to provide new therapeutic strategies in the fight against cancer.
Dr Monika Gullerova, University of Oxford
To undertake research into gene loop structures associated with convergent genes in S. pombe facilitate cohesion establishment
Dr Monika Gullerova will use her For Women in Science Fellowship to support her research at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. Her research will focus on elucidating the mechanism of Cohesin positioning on chromosomes.
All organisms consist of cells that multiply through cell division. Before a cell can divide it has to grow in size, duplicate its chromosomes and precisely distribute them between the two daughter cells. These different processes are coordinated in the cell cycle. Once chromosomes have been duplicated the identical sister chromatids so formed, have to be carefully aligned. Cohesin is a protein complex, which plays a crucial role in sister chromatids alignment. Lack of Cohesin causes cell death and is also associated with genetic diseases in humans. How Cohesin comes to the right places on chromosomes and how it ensures sister chromatids cohesion is the main part of my future research. It has been shown that the beginning and the end of genes are in close proximity and in 3D form looped structures. Dr Gullerova has already proven that not only do gene loop structures exist, but also that the intergene space between two genes is looped, if they face each other, are convergent. Cohesin is exclusively situated in these regions. This opens an exciting avenue for investigation.
Dr Monika Gullerova is currently a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Oxford. This fellowship will enable Dr Gullerova to establish the FISH DNA technique in her department in order to investigate how loop structure is related to cohesin function in sister chromatid alignment and understand the mechanism of this process.
Dr Heather Whitney, University of Bristol
To undertake research into ecological relevance of iridescence in Selaginella
Dr Heather Whitney will use her For Women In Science Fellowship to support her research at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol. Her research will focus on studying the role of iridescence in plants.
Plants are experts in manipulating and responding to light. One of the ways they do this is through the production of an incredible array of colours. Colour can be produced by the accumulation of pigments, and this has been studied in detail. However, an alternative mechanism of colour production, the production of structural colour, has been virtually ignored. One form of structural colour found in plants is iridescence, which changes hue at different angles. Many species of plants (and algae) produce vivid blue iridescence on their leaves, but its function is not known. Dr Whitney will use methods from several different scientific disciplines to discover what the function of blue leaf iridescence is.
Dr Heather Whitney is currently an Independent Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. Dr Whitney will use this fellowship to make field trips to Panama and Thailand to collect iridescent plant samples in order to investigate if iridescence has any effect on how much of the plant is eaten by herbivores and use insect behavioural methods to determine how iridescence could be used by plants to alter how they are perceived by insects.
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The winners of the four 2011 UK and Ireland Fellowships For Women In Science
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Dr Victoria Coker, University of Manchester
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Dr Emily Flashman, University of Oxford
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Dr Monika Gullerova, University of Oxford
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Dr Heather Whitney, University of Bristol
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