15 February 2010
Dr Kerry Franklin has been awarded a President's Medal in Plant Science from the Society of Experimental Biology (SEB). Kerry will join the School of Biological Sciences in March, from the University of Leicester.Kerry graduated in Biology from the University of Bristol in 1997. This was followed by an MRes. in Advanced Plant Science at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. In 2001, she obtained a PhD from the University of Southampton on the light-regulation of chlorophyll biosynthesis. Pursuing an interest in plant photobiology, Kerry moved to the University of Leicester, where she worked for 4 years under the mentorship of Professor Garry Whitelam. This was interspersed by a Short Term Fellowship in the lab of Professor Peter Quail (Plant Gene Expression Center, CA, USA), funded by the Human Frontier Science Program. Her postdoctoral research involved investigating the roles of the phytochrome family of plant photoreceptors and molecular analyses of plant shade avoidance responses.
In 2006, Kerry was awarded a Royal Society Research Fellowship and Lectureship at the University of Leicester. Her current research focuses on understanding the signalling processes controlling plant architectural adaptations to light and temperature stimuli and investigating the adaptive significance of different developmental strategies. Kerry will collect her medal in July, at the SEB’s annual meeting in Prague.