As reported previously, the BSDB has introduced the Cheryll Tickle Medal, 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 inaugural awardee Prof. Abigail Saffron Tucker who received the medal today at the BSCB/BSDB Spring Meeting 2016 where Abigail gave her outstanding and memorable Cheryll Tickle Award Lecture (soon be available on the BSDB YouTube Channel). To read more about Abigail, please download the BSDB Newletter 2015 or go to the post on The Node.

On this occasion, for the first time the actual medal was revealed, which was designed by Andreas Prokop and Megan Davey in discussion with Cheryll Tickle. It shows the famous digit aberrations that occur upon transplantation/manipulation of the zone of polarizing activity (ZPA) or implantation of beads soaked in retinoic acid or sonic hedgehog (for details see Towers & Tickle, 2009, Int J Dev Biol 53, 805ff.). Cheryll performed much of this work in chick as illustrated by the feather on the medal’s flip side, which also shows the typical tool set required for experimental operations and the BSDB logo depicting in ovo development from egg to embryo.

The BSDB is delighted to announce Enrico Coen CBE FRS of the John Innes Centre, Norwich, as the 2016 winner of the Waddington Medal. Professor Coen was awarded the medal for his pioneering contributions to understanding patterning and morphogenesis in plants, particularly snap dragon flowers. His work elegantly combines molecular genetics, diverse imaging techniques and computational modeling (see the Coen lab site). He is also well known for his popular science books ‘The art of genes’ (1999) and ‘Cells to civilisations’ (2012), and his painting, which has appeared on the cover of Cell and the walls of the Royal Society.

The medal talk was a pleasure to watch and is now available on YouTube. It was a scholarly masterpiece of conceptual brilliance, presented with inspiring enthusiasm, enriched with beautiful images, illustrated with enlightening and entertaining movies of pottery (!!!) and computer models, and even spiced up with live experiments. An interview performed by Cat Vicente during the Spring meeting is scheduled to be published in Development.

As reported earlier last year, the BSDB has introduced the Cheryll Tickle Medal, which will be 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 inaugural awardee Prof. Abigail Saffron Tucker. The medal will be presented at the BSCB/BSDB Spring Meeting 2016 where Abigail will present the Cheryll Tickle Award Lecture. If you want to read more, please download the BSDB Newletter 2015.