Two Johnians elected to Royal Society Fellowship

Two Johnians were elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society on 30 April 2014: Dr Ewan Birney and Professor Sheena Radford.

Dr Birney, Joint Associate Director and Senior Scientist of EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, came up to St John’s in 1996 and read for a PhD in Biological Sciences. Dr Birney has played a vital role in many large-scale genomics projects, particularly the annotation of the genome sequences of the human, mouse, chicken and other organisms, which has had a profound impact on our understanding of genomic biology. In 2003 he gave the prestigious Francis Crick Lecture, an award given by the Royal Society, and in 2012 he was elected fellow of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO).

Professor Radford, Professor of Structural Molecular Biology at the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, University of Leeds, came up to St John’s in 1984 and read for a PhD in Biochemistry. Professor Radford is recognised for her pioneering contributions to understanding how the properties of proteins enable them to fold and function biologically, or to misfold and cause degenerative diseases, and she has used a broad range of techniques in tackling these issues.