Background & History

The BSDB have taken the decision to award a new annual medal, the Cheryll Tickle Medal, which will be awarded to a mid-career, female scientist for her outstanding achievements in the field of Developmental Biology. The first medal will be awarded at the 2016 BSDB Spring Meeting, where the recipient will present the Cheryll Tickle Award Lecture. BSDB members are invited to nominate suitable candidates.

The award is named after Cheryll Tickle (CBE FRS FRSE Hon FSB), an extremely eminent cell and developmental biologist who used the developing limb bud to explore pattern formation in embryogenesis. After her undergraduate studies at Cambridge and PhD work at Glasgow, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University, then as a postdoc in the group of Lewis Wolpert at Middlesex Hospital (later merged into UCL) where she studied the morphogen model of digit patterning. This laid the foundation for her subsequent work on the elusive limb polarising factor, mechanisms of limb outgrowth, FGF signalling, HOX gene regulation and snake limblessness. While at Middlesex/UCL, she moved up the ranks from lecturer, to reader and eventually to Professor, and shortly after she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, an acolade which was awarded the same year she moved to Dundee (1998). Cheryll was the first ever Waddington medal winner (1998) and became the first female Royal Society Foulerton Fellow (2000). Currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Bath, she continues to explore diverse limb projects such as the loss of the pelvic fin in natural populations of sticklebacks as well as ectopic bone formation in wounded war veterans.

Nominations for the Cheryll Tickle Medal

Nominees should be outstanding female developmental biologists who have started their own research group in the UK within the last 15 years, with allowances for career breaks. Nominees should have made significant contributions to UK Developmental Biology and stand out as a role model for early career female researchers.

The following nomination procedure has been agreed by the Committee:

• Formal nominations should be made to the BSDB Secretary (secretary@bsdb.org) by the closing deadline which is 1^st of July each year, but can be received at any time.
• Nominations should be submitted as a statement of support (maximum 1 page A4) from a Proposer and Seconder (both BSDB members), explaining why the candidate is suitable for the Medal and providing a short summary of their major contributions to Developmental Biology.
• Nominations must be accompanied by a CV of max. 2 pages.
• All nominations received will be considered, and voted upon, by the Committee.

The winner will be invited to present the Cheryll Tickle Award Lecture at the following BSDB Spring Meeting, where the medal will be presented, usually by the BSDB Chair.

• The BSDB committee invites self-nominations for a new post graduate representative. Please, include a short text (max. 1 page) explaining your motivation and intentions to serve on the committee. Deadline will be 1 June 2015.
• The BSDB has newly announced the Cheryll Tickle award for women in their mid-scientific career (~ 15 years post PhD). The Nomination deadline will be 1 July 2015.
• Similarly, the Waddington Medal nomination deadline will be 1 August 2015, and nominations for outstanding candidates are being invited.
• Finally, the BSDB is approaching its 70^th anniversary in 2018. We are concerned that documents of the pioneer days might get lost with increasing numbers of older BSDB members approaching retirement. Please, let us know if you have old documents including old newsletter (we currently can’t trace back further than 2^nd half of 1999). We will make sure that such documents are being stored and/or digitalised and kept for future research. Furthermore, we would like to reconstruct the list of BSDB chairs starting from the inaugural meeting. Any help with this would be most welcome. Just contact Andreas Prokop under comms@bsdb.org.

BSDB members are encouraged to voice their opinion about the importance of Developmental Biology. A great opportunity is now provided by The Node.  They started a debate documented as a Storify based on the following rationale:

“In the current climate of budget constraints and political pressure there is a noticeable shift in the type of science preferred by funders, with funding increasingly going to projects with clear translational potential. Developmental biology is a basic science, but it feeds into our understanding of disease and regenerative medicine. But do funders recognise this? In other words: Is Developmental Biology at risk because of the increasing emphasis on applied science?”

We encourage you to participate in this debate. If you want to leave comments, just go to the Blog post or tweet your opinion copying @the_Node in.  Contributions will reveal an insight into the current thoughts within our community but also provide arguments and facts that can be used for a science communication and outreach campaign promoting Developmental Biology, as it was decided by the BSDB committee on its last meeting.