Celebrating 100 years of The Company of Biologists: Perspectives from two PhD students

We are extremely grateful to the BSDB for giving us the opportunity to attend the Biologists @ 100 conference in Liverpool. As PhD students investigating spinal cord injury and regeneration, this experience was invaluable. It allowed us to connect with scientists, gain insights into diverse fields and explore potential collaborations.

Simran Singh

 The meeting started off with an exciting early career research session, offering a unique chance to interact with individuals who have pursued various scientific career paths. A highlight for me was the keynote talk by Dr. Richard Server, co-founder of bioRxiv and medRxiv. He shared his career trajectory, discussed the impact of bioRxiv on publishing – especially during the Covid-19 pandemic –and highlighted the numerous transferable skills gained from an academic career.

The following three days were filled with inspiring and thought-provoking scientific talks. One of the first talks was by Professor Muzlifah Haniffa, recipient of the Cheryll Tickle Medal. She described herself as “born into immunology, married into developmental biology, and became best friends with single-cell omics”. Her research focuses on decoding the human immune system, particularly the spatial and temporal composition of immune cells and their roles beyond immunology, such as in development. Additionally, her work on the Human Developmental Cell Atlas, integrating developmental disorders, has had a profound translational impact. Throughout her talk, she emphasised the importance of interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration in science. She is also a strong advocate for women in STEM and leadership. I particularly liked her powerful statement “Women should continue to thrive in science not despite but because of the system”.

Image: Fantastic end to day 1 of the conference with the welcome reception at Museum of Liverpool

Another talk I enjoyed was by Professor Helen Skaer, winner of the BSDB Waddington Award for her outstanding research, contributions to the developmental biology community and excellent mentorship. Her research explores how cells work together to make an organ of the right shape, size and in the right place, with a focus on renal tubules in fruit flies, which are highly consistent. She eloquently described her research journey from studying Mercierella Enigmatica (reef building tubeworms) to fruit flies and shared some of her “most exciting moments” in the lab. One such moment was the identification of a ‘tip cell’, the master regulator that when ablated would arrest cell division of the renal tubules. My favourite part was due to the lack of a laser ablation machine, Professor Helen Skaer had to come up with a creative solution to manually “suck up” the tip cell. It reminded me theimportance of being creative in research and not being afraid to think outside the box.

Image: Winner of the BSDB Waddington Award (Professor Helen Skaer)

Overall, I had a great time at the Biologists@100 conference. It was a fantastic opportunity to hear talks from scientists across the world. I am now ready to go back into the lab feeling more inspired than ever!

Renato Duarte Dos Santos

Spreading science for 100 years, The Company of Biologists and BSDB have delivered an amazing event full of opportunities to learn more about the current work in developmental biology, but also in environmental awareness and career pathing in biology. This year, the developmental biology showcase at the conference had a clear focus on the role of signal patterning and mechanical signaling, which has been shown to affect multiple processes that we tend to view as solely based on biochemical reactions.

I had a special interest in the work done by Dr. Muzlifah Haniffa, awarded the BSDB Tickle Medal for her involvement in the Human Development  Cell Atlas, a project aiming to incorporate single-omics from all human cells that intervene in human development. I believe this tool will become intemporal for the world of science, with applications for all the multitude of biomedical-related fields.

Another work that caught my eye was the development of a new barcoding method and bioinformatic processing capable of improving the output of single-cell expression analysis, increasing the sampling and reducing substantially the price in comparison with the current market offer (Maizels et al., 2024). This amazing work has been done by Dr. Rory Maizels while as a PhD student. His brilliance and achievements have led him to be awarded the well-deserved BSDB PhD student Beddington Medal. Another approach that I found very interesting was the use of the cell shape to determine the cell type and cell fate, like a pseudo-time analysis (Pönisch et al., 2024 preprint). This innovative work was made by Ewa Paluch from the University of Cambridge.

Besides development talks, there were also some morning plenary talks about climate change and biodiversity loss to help spread awareness about this urgent global matter that hasn’t been handled so far as it should.

Image: Jane Francis talk – British Antarctic Survey                                                   

Image: Lunch, posters and exhibition

I also found the early-career researcher career session quite insightful. It helped me and most likely many to gain a realistic view of the current scientific paradigm and the many options we biologists possess in terms of profession. The chance to have a one-to-one talk with a professional of each career path was for sure one of the most useful experiences. I also have to mention the gala dinner, which was of the highest luxury in a mouth-dropping location, the St George’s Hall. Overall, the conference was amazing, full of great talks, opportunities to network with high-tier researchers, and to enjoy the scientific community at its best.

Images: ACC Liverpool

2025 WADDINGTON MEDAL WINNER: HELEN SKAER

We are very pleased to announce that this year’s Waddington medal winner is Helen Skaer. Her fundamental discoveries have helped shape our understanding of organogenesis, and her impressive range of teaching and outreach activities have inspired countless others.

The Waddington Medal is the only national award in Developmental Biology. It honours outstanding research performance as well as services to the subject community. This year’s medal was awarded at the Biologists @ 100 conference at Liverpool, where the recipient presented the Waddington Medal Lecture.

 

It is a huge pleasure to nominate Professor Helen Skaer for the BSDB Waddington medal. She is a tireless advocate for our community, and has been teaching, inspiring and supporting developmental biologists for over 50 years. Throughout her career, Helen has been fascinated with understanding how cells are organised/organise themselves to produce physiologically functional organs. Her work unravelling the coordination between diverse cellular behaviours such as cell division, specification, differentiation and migration during morphogenesis has made major contributions to our understanding of organogenesis. Given her outstanding research, inspirational teaching, and her wide regard in the community, we believe she embodies the values the Waddington Medal aims to promote. We are confident that she will give a phenomenal Waddington lecture, that will serve to inspire the whole community.

Helen was one of the very first developmental biologists to tackle the relationship between form and function. During her PhD, Helen focused on understanding how excitable cells are resilient to environmental fluctuations in osmotic and ionic potential, giving her a grounding in cellular physiology. She then moved her focus to epithelial tissues – initially probing the relationship between their structure and their specific physiological attributes. During this phase of her work, she demonstrated that in invertebrates, which lack tight junctions, septate junctions can restrict paracellular flow and so contribute to epithelial tightness. She also pioneered technical developments in the low temperature preservation of material for freeze-fracture, leading to the vitrification of biological samples for electron microscopy.

Through this work, Helen became interested in the cellular activities that underlie the development of epithelial tissues; she set out to understand how intrinsic patterns of gene expression integrate with external signals to define specific cell behaviours. She decided to use the Malpighian (renal) tubules of Drosophila as a model tissue – realising that this system would enable her to combine cellular, genetic and molecular approaches with definable physiological readouts. This choice proved inspired: over the years she has dissected out the distinct cellular and molecular behaviours underlying the development of an epithelial tissue into a physiologically functional organ – pioneering ‘multi-scale’ developmental cell biology long before it became trendy!

Helen’s innovation and determination shine through in both her research and teaching successes. A standout example is from the late 80’s, when Helen demonstrated that the large cells at the tip of the developing renal tubules are mitogenically active, by dissecting open Drosophila embryos and ablating these single cells manually. As students, we loved to hear about Helen ablating renal tubule tip cells by sucking them up finely pulled capillary tubes – it inspired us to think outside the box and believe that anything was possible if you put your mind to it. Using genetic approaches, she then demonstrated that these cells are selected in the tubules by a combination of intrinsic factors and intercellular signalling; through the activity of the proneural transcription factors, whose patterns of expression are regulated by Wnt signalling and by Delta/Notch-mediated lateral inhibition. This was one of the early demonstrations that specific cell lineages outside the nervous system are specified by the refinement of proneural gene expression by lateral inhibition.

Over the years, the work of Helen and her lab has shed light on the regulation of features common to the architecture and function of all epithelia. Many of their findings have contributed to our understanding of vertebrate organogenesis, through their demonstration of conservation in regulatory pathways and networks, in their roles during nephrogenesis and more broadly in the development of tubular epithelia.

Helen has always combined research with an impressive range of teaching and outreach activities. Teaching undergraduate courses in Cambridge, Oxford and Sheffield continuously since 1968, Helen designed and ran courses in developmental biology at all three institutions, including the first interdepartmental course in Oxford across the Biological Sciences/Medicine departments. She has trained over 50 summer vacation and final year students in her lab, many of whom have gone on to do PhDs and some of whom are now University academics teaching developmental/cell biology themselves (e.g. Tanya Whitfield, Keith Brennan, Peter Baumann). Finally, Helen plays a key role in promoting developmental biology in India, giving many talks to college students, and participating in both formal and informal collaborations in the NCBS in Bangalore. She has been a panel member for the India Alliance since its inception – a collaboration between the WT and Indian Department of Biotechnology, supporting and advising scientists across the community.

  • Nicolas Tapon
  • Kyra Campbell
  • Tanya Whitfield
  • David Strutt
  • Marysia Placzek

5 Key papers

  1. Skaer, H. (1989) Cell division in the development of the Malpighian tubules of Drosophila melanogaster is regulated by single, specialised cells. Nature 342, 566-569. https://doi.org/10.1038/342566a0
  2. Denholm, B., Sudarsan, V., Pasalodos Sanchez, S., Artero, R., Lawrence, P, Maddrell, S., Baylies, M. and Skaer, H. (2003) Dual origin of the renal tubules in Drosophila: mesodermal cells integrate and polarise to establish secretory function. Curr. Biol. 13: 1052-1057. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0960-9822(03)00375-0
  3. Weavers, H., Prieto-Sánchez, S., Grawe, F., Garcia-López, A., Artero, R., Wilsch-Braeuninger, M., Ruiz-Gómez, M., Skaer, H.*, & Denholm, B. (2009) The insect nephrocyte is a podocyte-like cell with a filtration slit diaphragm. Nature 457:322-326. *corresponding author https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07526
  4. Bunt, S., Hooley, C., Hu, N., Scahill, C., Weavers, H. and Skaer, H. (2010) Haemocyte-secreted Type IV Collagen enhances BMP signalling to guide renal tubule morphogenesis in Drosophila. Developmental Cell 19: 296-306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2010.07.019
  5. Weavers, H. & Skaer, H. (2013) Tip cells act as dynamic cellular anchors in the morphogenesis of looped renal tubules in Drosophila. Developmental Cell 27: 331–344. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2013.09.020

2025 CHERYLL TICKLE MEDAL WINNER: MUZLIFAH HANIFFA

In 2016, the BSDB introduced the Cheryll Tickle Medal, which is being awarded annually to a mid-career, female scientist for her outstanding achievements in the field of Developmental Biology.

The BSDB is proud to announce the 2025 awardee is Prof.  Muzlifah Haniffa!

 

 

It is our great pleasure to nominate Professor Muzlifah (Muzz) Haniffa for the BSDB Cheryll Tickle medal. Muzz is Professor of Dermatology and Immunology at Newcastle University and interim Head of the Cellular Genetics programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. She is a pioneer in single cell genomics and cell atlasing of human development, which is one of the most exciting frontiers in developmental biology today. She focuses on the immune system, addressing how this complex cellular system develops across the body and how it contributes to the development of other tissues. What makes her work unique is its breadth: she studies systems across multiple organs, and uses multiple developmental time to reconstruct dynamics.

Muzz’s discoveries in human prenatal immune development represent a game changer in developmental biology and immunology. This began with a ground-breaking study that defined the complete cellular and molecular processes underpinning human fetal liver haematopoiesis (Popescu Nature 2019), continued with the first ever characterisation of the human fetal bone marrow (Jardine Nature 2021), and culminated in her recent her recent characterisation of the multi-organ function of the human yolk sac in supporting haematopoiesis (Goh, Botting Science 2023). With this corpus of papers she has comprehensively decoded the developing immune system – a stunning achievement.

Her work has significant translational impacts. She discovered hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) vary in potency across gestation, pinpointing this change to the molecular level (Popescu Nature 2019). The higher potency and broader output of HSCs earlier in liver development is incredibly relevant for HSC engineering and transplantation. She characterised how intrinsic HSC potential is altered in Down syndrome, altering the bone marrow microenvironment and causing genome-wide changes in many cell types (Jardine Nature 2021). This was one of first (if not the first) developmental studies of a human tissue with chromosomal alterations at single cell resolution.

Muzz has leveraged her clinical background to understand the links between developmental biology and various diseases. She discovered macrophages and endothelial cells interact to form a vascular developmental programme in the fetus, but also in eczema and psoriasis (Reynolds, Science, 2021). This co-option of developmental programs in adult tissues presents a paradigm for many other diseases. Beyond developmental biology, she has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the immune responses in COVID-19 (e.g. Stephenson, Nature Medicine 2021), demonstrating her commitment to advancing human wellbeing.

In addition to her extraordinary scientific output, Muzz has shown fantastic leadership and advocacy within the developmental biology community. As part of the international Human Cell Atlas initiative, she co-leads the Human Developmental Cell Atlas. She leads the blood and immune system theme in the Human Developmental Biology Initiative from Wellcome, and is regularly approached for her commentary on leading-edge developmental biology (e.g. Haniffa, Maartens & Teichmann, Nature Methods 2023). She is Chair of the Wellcome Career Development Award interview panel, Chair of the Academy of Medical Sciences sectional committee (cell and developmental biology, immunology and microbiology, genetics), a Trustee of the Foulkes Foundation, and will be on the Governing Body of the Lister Institute as of summer 2024. She is also a strong proponent of positive research culture changes and widening participation within academia (see for instance Teichmann, Haniffa & Fisher, Nature Communications 2022), and values collaboration and open science. We believe Muzz would be an entirely fitting and inspirational choice for the 2024 Cheryll Tickle Medal.

    • Sarah Teichmann
    • Liz Robertson

2025 Beddington Medal Winner: Rory Maizels

The Beddington Medal is the BSDB’s major commendation to promising young biologists, awarded for the best PhD thesis in Developmental Biology defended in the year previous to the award. Rosa Beddington was one of the greatest talents and inspirational leaders in the field of developmental biology. Rosa made an enormous contribution to the field in general and to the BSDB in particular, so it seemed entirely appropriate that the Society should establish a lasting memorial to her. The design of the medal, mice on a stylised DNA helix, is from artwork by Rosa herself.

Like many years, it was a tough decision for the BSBD committee to choose a winner for the 2025 Beddington medal. We are pleased to announce that this goes to Rory Maizels, for his PhD work at the Crick Institute on differential signal interpretation and cell fate decisions in the developing neural tube.

I am writing to enthusiastically support Rory Maizels’s nomination for the Beddington Medal. His PhD work represents a remarkable achievement that advances our field’s long-standing goal: developing dynamical models that capture the full complexity of developmental systems. The central challenge in developmental biology is to understand how complex, multicellular tissues emerge from the coordinated actions of individual cells. While we have made great strides in identifying key molecular players and mapping gene regulatory networks, we still lack the ability to create predictive dynamical models that capture development in its full complexity. Rory’s work represents a critical step toward addressing this fundamental challenge. What sets Rory’s contribution apart is both its comprehensive scope and meticulous execution. Rather than pursuing flashy but superficial advances, he focused on building robust foundations – developing and rigorously validating new experimental and computational approaches that together enable dynamic modelling of development at scale. Remarkably, Rory personally drove every aspect of the project: from optimising molecular biology protocols and establishing automated laboratory workflows, to designing novel machine learning frameworks for analysing the resulting data. This rare combination of experimental and computational expertise allowed him to iterate between theory and practice in a uniquely effective way.

Prior to his PhD, Rory built a strong foundation through diverse research experience: molecular biology at LMCB UCL, developing computational tools for mitochondrial research at Oxford (resulting in an eLife publication), and completing the prestigious Frank Knox Fellowship at Harvard in Computational Science and Engineering. It is important to emphasise that this fellowship was not simply a bioinformatics MSc but a computational course aimed at engineers and data scientists. This unique background prepared him perfectly for tackling the emerging challenges in single-cell genomics and developmental biology. At the Crick, he quickly demonstrated exceptional independence and scientific maturity, showing deep knowledge of the field while working autonomously and effectively communicating complex ideas to others.

In the first months in the lab (during the COVID pandemic), Rory led the computational analysis of a major single-cell RNA sequencing study of human neural development, analysing data from multiple stages of embryonic spinal cord tissue to identify distinct cell types and map differentiation pathways. His analysis not only revealed the diversity of neural cell types and their developmental trajectories but also provided important comparative insights between human and mouse development, demonstrating both his technical capabilities and his ability to collaborate effectively on complex projects. This work is published.

In his main PhD project, Rory developed novel experimental and computational methods. This delivered three major technical innovations that together advance our ability to study developmental dynamics. First, he developed sci-FATE2, an optimized and semi-automated protocol for metabolic labelling and single-cell RNA sequencing that matches commercial platforms in quality while being simpler to implement. This is published as a methods paper. Second, he created Velvet, a deep learning framework that improves upon existing methods for inferring cell state transitions from RNA data by integrating neighbourhood information into its velocity calculations. Finally, he extended this work with VelvetSDE, a cutting-edge neural stochastic differential equation system that can predict long-term cell fate trajectories and identify key decision points in development, while capturing the inherent variability in cellular decision-making. Applying this to data from the neural tube led to the realisation that expression of Shh modulators are crucial for differential signal interpretation and cell fate decision in the developing neural tube. This combination of experimental and computational advances provides a robust framework for studying the complex dynamics of development at unprecedented scale and resolution. The work recasts single-cell analyses from descriptions of observed data to models of the dynamics that generated them, providing a framework for investigating developmental fate decisions. This work is published.

Rory’s unique combination of creativity, determination, and technical expertise is responsible for the success of the project. His exceptional strengths in both experimental and computational approaches, spanning molecular biology to machine learning, gives him an ability to tackle complex biological problems from multiple angles. But his ability is not limited to technical skills. He is a deep thinker and has developed a clear and far-reaching view of the future of developmental biology. These scholarly capabilities are evidenced by his invited review on single-cell transcriptomics, which he authored independently following a well-received presentation at the Royal Society. We are also completing an article that sets out a vision for developmental biology in the single cell genomics era. In short, Rory is both a thinker and a doer.

The impact of Rory’s work is already evident in the catalytic effect it is having in the field. It has attracted substantial funding (three grants: CRUK Development, Crick I2I Funding, BBSRC project grant) and underpins five new projects in the lab, including single-cell screening of glioma transcription factors, timeresolved sequencing of organoids, and targeted sequencing approaches. Beyond our group, it has enabled new collaborations in cancer screening, neurodegeneration research, and immunology with leading labs. Most notably, this work formed the foundation for Rory’s successful fellowship application for post-doc at EBI and Sanger, where he will further develop these approaches.

Rory exemplifies the qualities we hope to cultivate in our field: deep theoretical understanding combined with practical capability, rigorous methodology alongside creative vision, and the ability to both conceive and execute transformative research. He is not just technically accomplished but a profound thinker about the future of developmental biology and a clear communicator. His work demonstrates both the insight to identify fundamental challenges and the skill to address them systematically.

Given the extraordinary breadth and depth of his contributions, his proven ability to execute complex interdisciplinary projects, and the clear impact his work is already having on the field, I believe Rory Maizels is an outstanding recipient of the Beddington Medal. He represents the kind of scientist who will help lead our field into its next phase, where we can finally begin to build a comprehensive understanding of development.

James Briscoe

 

Papers:

Maizels, R. J., and Briscoe, J. (2025). Gene regulatory networks: from correlaCve models to causal explanaCons. In prepara(on.

Maizels, R. J. (2024). A dynamical perspecCve: moving towards mechanism in single-cell transcriptomics. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B

Maizels, R. J., Snell, D. M., and Briscoe, J. (2024). ReconstrucCng developmental trajectories using latent dynamical systems and Cme-resolved transcriptomics. Cell Systems

Maizels, R. J., Snell, D. M., and Briscoe, J. (2024). A protocol for Cme-resolved transcriptomics through metabolic labeling and combinatorial indexing. STAR Protocols

Rayon, T., Maizels, R. J., Barrington, C., and Briscoe, J. (2021). Single-cell transcriptome profiling of the human developing spinal cord reveals a conserved genetic programme with human-specific features. Development

2025 WOLPERT MEDAL WINNER: PLEASANTINE MILL

Following the sad passing of one of the greats of Developmental Biology, Lewis Wolpert, the BSDB committee has launched a new annual medal in his honour. Lewis was well known for his ability to distil our subject’s most engaging and fundamental problems into concise and well-grounded core concepts of Biology. This led to vastly important contributions to research in our field, but also to the communication of its problems to a broader audience. Through teaching, popular science writing and acting as a spokesperson for Science as a whole, Lewis inspired many of us into the deeper study of Developmental Biology. Therefore, our annual ‘Wolpert medal’ is presented to an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to the teaching and communication of Developmental Biology.We are very happy to announce that this year’s  winner of the BSDB Wolpert medal is Prof. Pleasantine Mill from the University of Edinburgh.

 

We enthusiastically endorse Prof. Pleasantine Mill (Prof. of Cilia Biology at the University of Edinburgh and MRC Investigator at the MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh) for the Wolpert Medal. Prof. Mill is an outstanding Developmental Biologist who has enthused us and others in our own research topics in developmental biology. The reasons for nominating her are listed below:

• Leadership and community building

Prof. Mill has demonstrated exceptional initiative and leadership by keeping the global cilia community connected. Her efforts since the early 2020 lockdowns have kept lines of scientific communication open and fostered collaborations amongst a global community of researchers.

She has organised over 50 UK Cilia Network e-symposia which ran weekly during the peak of the pandemic lockdowns and now run quarterly. Given the importance of cilia in developmental processes, the e-symposia bring together a global and diverse network of developmental biologists and other scientists working on all aspects of cilia.

A major focus of the cilia e-symposia is to provide a platform and exposure to graduate students, ECRs and junior PIs. Her stewardship during the pandemic promoted scientific communication during challenging times for junior researchers and kept us all going.

• Promotion of understanding of developmental disorders

Prof. Mill has over 20 years of experience as a Developmental Geneticist. Throughout this time, she has advocated and campaigned for more funding for the study of rare developmental ciliopathies.

She is on the Scientific Advisory Board for Ciliopathy Alliance and Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD) Research (UK Patient Charities), member of the leadership team for the UK Cilia Network and the MRCs Congenital Anomalies Cluster. Through her many leadership roles, she has directed her efforts to promote research on rare developmental diseases. Her group has also undertaken important public engagement activities including the PCD Awareness Day in 2018 and PCD Family Day 2019.

• Championing voices for ECRs and junior PIs

Prof. Mill’s drive in her field of modeling rare developmental disorders and her passion for equitable science has inspired a diverse generation of new cell and developmental biologists, including us. As minority scientists with fledgling independent groups, we have both especially benefited from the platforms she created for research conducted by junior PIs. We are certain, like us, she has inspired countless other emerging developmental biologists.

For these and many other reasons, we feel strongly that Prof. Mill is fully deserving of a Wolpert Medal in recognition of her heroic efforts to promote equitable and open scientific communication and for inspiring a new wave of developmental biologists.

  • Girish Ram Mali
  • Raman Das