Ottoline’s career began as an undergraduate and then PhD student in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She then travelled to Indiana University as part of her post-doctoral research before establishing her lab through a lectureship at the University of York in 1994. In 2011 she was instrumental in establishing the Sainsbury lab in Cambridge, where she is now director.

“Ottoline’s current research programme remains refreshing and exciting, embracing computational modelling, quantitative traits and selective breeding to give an integrated systems view of the regulation of plant form”. Tanya Whitfield and Nick Monk, University of Sheffield.

Ottoline’s work has resulted in huge advances in our knowledge of hormone action during the control of branching in plant development. Notable contributions include being among the first to exploit the advantages of Arabidopsis as a model species to study hormone action. In doing so, she revealed the mechanism by which the classical plant hormone auxin act

s, having identified the auxin receptor in collaboration with Mark Estelle. In addition, she has do

ne pioneering work in understanding the function of MAX genes in controlling branching. Her work exemplifies how a creative application of inter-disciplinary approaches, experimental embryology and genetics can be combined together to understand the fundamental principles of development. In doing so, it represents the very best of developmental biology and communicates clearly the excitement that can derived from research in our subject.

“She has also been a great advocate for Science, Women, and developmental biology in the political arena as well as for the general public”. Claudio Stern (University College London) and Enrico Coen (John Innes Centre).

Alongside her research career, Ottoline has driven many initiatives for improve equality and diversity in the Sciences. One of her best-known contributions has been the publication of her booklet “Mothers in Science: 64 ways to have it all”. Her approach here was to lead by example, and has proven to be very effective. We encourage our members to read recent interviews with Ottoline that can be found in Development and the Royal Society of Biology.

“When I was pregnant with twins and trying to run my newly-formed research group I came across Ottoline’s little book “Mothers In Science”. It was so important to me, and is just one example of the many things that Ottoline has done that have been important to so many people.” Sally Lowell, University of Edinburgh.

Ottoline continues to make substantial contributions to both teaching and research aspects of the Developmental biology community. Recent examples include serving on the Editorial Board of Development, sitting on the Nuffield council on Bioethics, and being a Member of Council of the Royal Society. She has been co-Editor in Chief for Current Opinion Plant Biology.  Ottoline is also a committed teacher of developmental biology, and is the joint author of the textbook Mechanisms in Plant Development (Leyser and Day, 2003, Blackwell Science Ltd).

While working as a practising paediatric surgeon, Wajid was inspired to take on a PhD in 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Berthold Göttgens and Prof. Jenny Nichols at the Wellcome-MRC Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge. Here, he learnt how defects in the early lineage specification events of mammalian embryos can explain many of the tragic infant deformities that he was faced with in his clinic. In preparation for his PhD, he had previously undertaken and MPhil in Computational Biology at the Department of Mathematics and Applied Physics at the University of Cambridge, for which he was awarded a distinction. Thus, it is easy to see how his foundations in three alternate disciplines (medicine, computer science and embryology) has enabled him to produce a PhD thesis of exceptionally high quality, for which he is deserving of the 2020 BSDB Beddington award.

Wajid contributed to eight papers during his PhD, two of which were as first author. For his co-first author publication in 2016, Wajid pioneered a novel approach to investigate mesoderm formation by generating the first single cell transcriptome analysis of early mouse gastrulae. He found that Tal1, a transcription factor initially believed to be required to pause nascent mesoderm in an uncommitted state, is not essential for diverting cells exiting the primitive streak from precocious cardiac development. Wajid’s contribution to this study included dissection of early postimplantation mouse embryos (E6.5), as well as processing and analysis of the scRNAseq data. For his co-first author paper of 2018, a more ambitious RNAseq data set was generated from embryos of a range of stages to enable a deeper understanding of cell fate decisions during gastrulation to be garnered. Wajid masterminded and organised the timed mating for embryo production, and recruited the dissection team, since this large-scale undertaking required rapid collection of single cells.

In addition to his work in in the lab, he used his expanding computational skills to contribute extensively to the bioinformatics analysis. Wajid generated an interactive web tool and personally instructed members and associates of the gastrulation consortium on its operation. This ambitious study contributed novel understanding of how somatic cell types may be ordered and, crucially, revealed a role for leukotriene induction, via Alox5 and its cofactor, Alox5a, in specification of erythromyeloid progenitors from haemogenic endothelium precursors. Wajid then returned to the lab to employ an in vitro assay using embryonic stem cells to demonstrate a role for leukotriene in driving blood formation.

Outside of these major contributions of his PhD work, Wajid collaborated extensively and is a co-author on multiple studies. These include a project with Shlomit Edri and Alfonso Martinez Arias to explore the transcriptomic signature marking neuromesodermal progenitors in aggregates of mouse embryonic stem cells allowed to develop in 3D culture, or gastruloids. He also worked with mouse embryos to study the role of Nanog during gastrulation together with a visiting PhD student, Julio Sainz de Aja. In addition, he contributed to a larger group of researchers who together performed dynamic single cell RNAseq analysis of mouse embryos during gastrulation.

Wajid is now established in Cambridge as a paediatric surgeon, and has established a career plan with his head of department to return to developmental biology as a surgeon scientist later this year, a very rare breed of individuals who combine an active career in surgery with research at the bench.

Finally I leave you with some thoughts on Wajid from our 2017 Cheryll Tickle award winner- Prof. Jenny Nichols:

“I am comforted to know that sick children will benefit from the depth of knowledge and dexterity Wajid acquired during his PhD that will ensure the best possible treatment for them at the hands of a genuinely compassionate and competent individual”.

“It was always a pleasure for me to work at the bench alongside Wajid; his enthusiasm, wit and generally sunny disposition, even at antisocial times of night, made the experiments a lot of fun, and I knew I could rely on his reagents and high standards to ensure a meaningful (and publishable) outcome. Wajid’s participation in various projects was also in demand further afield”.

Ben Steventon and Jenny Nichols.