Update: Queen's prizes

21 March 2006

Wellcome Trust-funded researchers at Birkbeck College London, Exeter and Dundee received their 2005 Queen's Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education in February 2006.

Professor Martin Eimer and colleagues at Birkbeck Centre for Brain Function and Development investigate the neural basis of human mental abilities, such as the perception of faces and objects, attention, memory, and language. In 2006, the Centre will move to a new purpose-built research building, the Woburn Link Building, part-funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Professor Andrew Hattersley and colleagues in Exeter received a prize for their pioneering work unravelling the genetic causes of diabetes.

And Sir Philip Cohen, Director of the Wellcome Trust Biocentre at the University of Dundee, and colleagues in the School of Life Sciences and Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit, were recognised for their creation of a consortium of six leading pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs for major diseases including cancer and diabetes. A Dundee team led by Professor Mike Ferguson was recently awarded £8.1 million by the Trust to progress potential new therapies for neglected diseases such as leishmaniasis and Chagas' disease.