Top awards for the MRC in Birthday Honours
Two scientists and a board member from the Medical Research Council (MRC) have been recognised in the Queen’s honours announced on Saturday 13 June.
Professor Sheila Rodwell and Dr Michael Runswick were awarded an OBE and MBE respectively. MRC board member Dr Annette Doherty was awarded an OBE for services to the pharmaceutical industry. Dr Doherty is senior vice-president of Pfizer Global Research and Development at Sandwich Laboratories in Canterbury.
Prof Rodwell (nee Bingham) is the Director of the MRC Centre for Nutritional Epidemiology in Cancer Prevention and Survival at the University of Cambridge, and a Principal Investigator of the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC) study in Norfolk. By developing new biomarkers of dietary intake and disease risk, her work examines the link between diet and genetic & environmental factors in later onset cancer by means of epidemiological studies.
One paper, published in The Lancet, showed a strong protective effect of fibre against bowel cancer, while another demonstrated that people who eat large quantities of red meat but little dietary fibre are at particular risk.
Professor Rodwell, a life member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge, was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001 for her work on biomarkers, and Honorary Professor of the University of Cambridge in 2006 for her research in nutritional epidemiology.
Mr Runswick is an experimental scientist who has successfully carried out important experiments in biochemistry and molecular biology on behalf of the Medical Research Council. By the time he retires later this year, he will have worked for the Council for 37 years, firstly at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and since 1998 at the Dunn Human Nutrition Unit.
Since 1978, he has worked closely with Professor Sir John Walker FRS and he made key contributions to discoveries that led in 1997 to the award of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry to Sir John for elucidating the mechanism of biological synthesis of the universal energy molecule adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.
During his long association with Sir John, Mr Runswick has helped to train more than 50 PhD students and post-doctoral scientists, many of whom are now successful independent scientists, both in the UK and overseas. Many of them will gather at a dinner to be held in Cambridge in September to mark Dr Runswick’s retirement.
In addition to his scientific activities, Mr Runswick has participated actively for many years in Rugby Union at national level, first as a referee and now as a trainer and assessor of referees. Mr Runswick’s wife Shirley retired recently after 26 years’ service with the Medical Research Council.
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