Student Education News

Faculty Researchers Celebrate Two High Profile Awards

Faculty Researchers Celebrate Two High Profile Awards

Here at Leeds we love to celebrate the achievements of our students and colleagues. Well to kick off 2016 here is yet another success for us to share with you. 

In December, Ruth Norman, a PhD student here in the Faculty of Biological Sciences and Dr Sabine Lotteau, a postdoc in the faculty were both awarded prestigious Travel awards from The Biophysical Society. 

Dr Lotteau was awarded an annual CPOW Travel Award to attend the Biophysical Society’s 60th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, California, February 27- March 2, 2016. CPOW, the Society’s Committee for Professional Opportunities for Women, has initiated these travel fellowships to increase the number of women biophysicists and encourage their participation at the Meeting. The recipients of this competitive award must be female postdoctoral fellows or mid-career scientists presenting a poster or oral presentation at the conference. Each awardee receives a travel grant and will be recognized at a reception.

Sabine, 28, who received her PhD from Lyon University in 2013, was thrilled about the award, "The Annual Meeting of Biophysical Society is the largest meeting of biophysicists in the world so as a biophysicist’s woman I am really pleased to be part of the CPOW Travel Award winners". She has been recognised for her work on muscle function in health and disease. More specifically in the area of muscle-based side effects of statin treatment which have major implication for statin compliance. She will be presenting her current research, Simvastatin has profound effects on sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ leak in skeletal but not cardiac muscle: a mechanism for myopathy”at the event in Los Angeles.

Hot on the heels of this success was Ruth Norman's award of an international travel grant to attend the Biophysical Society’s 60th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, California, February 27-March 2, 2016. The purpose of these awards is to foster and initiate further interaction between American biophysicists and scientists working in countries experiencing financial difficulties. Recipients of this competitive award are chosen based on scientific merit and their proposed presentation at the meeting. They will be honoured at a reception on Sunday, February 28 at the Los Angeles Convention Centre.

Ruth, who is in her 4th and final year of her PhD said “I was thrilled when I got the email saying I had been awarded this travel grant, they are highly competitive awards.” Ruth, 26, is carrying out her PhD here at Leeds and is looking at changes in membrane proteins and their organisation within a cell in heart failure. The work she will be presenting at the conference itself will be Metoprolol reverses β-adrenergic remodeling in the failing right ventricle of pulmonary artery hypertensive (PAH) rats”.

The Biophysical Society, founded in 1958, is a professional, scientific Society established to encourage development and dissemination of knowledge in biophysics. The Society promotes growth in this expanding field through its annual meeting, monthly journal, and committee and outreach activities. Its 9000 members are located throughout the U.S. and the world, where they teach and conduct research in colleges, universities, laboratories, government agencies, and industry. For more information on these awards, the Society, or the 2016 Annual Meeting, visit www.biophysics.org.

 

27th January 2016