Congratulations to ICaMB‘s Professor Jeff Errington, who has just been awarded the prestigious Biochemical Society Novartis Medal and Prize for 2014.

The Novartis Medal and Prize is an annual award that recognises contributions to the development of any branch of biochemistry. Work leading up to the award must be carried out in the UK but is open to all nationalities. A list of previous winners can be seen here. A full list of the 2014 prize winners is here.

Jeff moved to Newcastle in 2005 where he became Director of ICaMB before standing down in 2012.  He founded the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology (CBCB) in 2007, which has since become a world leading centre for microbial research with a strong interest in aiding the discovery of the next generation of antibiotics.  Jeff’s lab is best known for its ground breaking work on the bacterial cell cycle and cell morphogenesis.  On the ICaMB blog we recently highlighted his Cell paper on L-form bacteria and insights into primordial cell division.

This is the video where Jeff describes the work in this paper

Early work from the Errington lab led to the formation in 1998 of  Prolysis, an antibacterial drug discovery company, which was recently acquired by an international anti-infectives company Biota Pharmaceuticals Inc.  More recently, a Newcastle University spin out company Demuris Ltd has been established to exploit drug screening opportunities emerging from the Errington lab.

In ICaMB, we are all delighted that Jeff’s work has received this recognition.  Above all it proves that you can achieve success in science while still being a a great guy who loves his beer and football.