Max Perutz Award shortlist announced
28 July 2010
Twelve outstanding essays have been shortlisted for the 2010 Max Perutz Science Writing Award, the MRC’s annual competition recognising the ability of our PhD students to write compellingly about their research.
From statistics to Superman, conquistadores to cortisol, the essays cover a range of scientific subjects with great skill and imagination.
More than 100 PhD students entered the competition, which encourages junior MRC-funded researchers to communicate about their work for a non-scientific audience. First prize is £1,000 and publication of the successful essay in the Guardian newspaper.
The winner, to be announced at an awards ceremony on 25 August, will be chosen by a judging panel of professional scientists and writers including the MRC’s chief executive, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, and the Guardian’s science and environment correspondent, Alok Jha.
2010 Max Perutz shortlist:
- Lucas Amenga-Etego, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford: “Evolutionary arms race, finding the trade-offs”
- Stephen Burgess, MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge: “A few causal remarks about your health”
- Simon Cox, Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Edinburgh: “Cortisol: the brain accelerator?”
- Olly Donnelly, Leeds Institute for Molecular Medicine: “An enemy’s enemy”
- Davy Evans, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge: “On the border: when extreme emotions take control”
- Sam Gibbons-Frendo, MRC Centre for Neurodegeneration Research, London: “Illuminating the darkness”
- Nicola Harris, Northern Institute of Cancer Research, Newcastle: “Wanted: dead or alive”
- Catherine Mercer, Human Genetics Division, University of Southampton: “From the heart”
- Marianne Neary, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London: “Conquistadores and cot death”
- Laurence O’Connor-Read, University of Sheffield: “Why the world needs Superman”
- Neil Rajan, Institute of Human Genetics, Newcastle: “Surgery-sparing science: moving away from the cutting edge”
- James Nicholas Sleigh, MRC Functional Genomics Unit, Oxford: “Spinal muscular atrophy: worming our way towards a cure”
