Awards

Charles Darwin Award and Marsh Prize

This Award is presented in partnership with the Zoological Society of London , for the best zoological project by an undergraduate student attending a university in Great Britain or Northern Ireland.


The 2009 winner is Haihan Tan

For the project ‘Novel roles of nuclear receptors in cell fate decisions of neural stem cells and differentiated progeny in Drosophila’, certain types of what are commonly called fruit flies.

The aim was to identify entities known as nuclear hormone receptors which interact with what is known by scientists as "the Prospero transcription factor". The project involved a large amount of work utilising challenging techniques that many PhD students would find hard to apply. Haihan cloned many of the known nuclear hormone receptors and tested whether they interacted with Prospero. Those that did were tested for embryonic expression patterns. The project is well presented, based on a mature understanding of the topic, and is clearly publishable in the mainstream scientific literature.

Email:



Partner:

The Zoological Society of London
Regent's Park
London
NW1 4RY

Previous Winners: