The 2023 Excellence in Science Award (sponsored by Portland Press) will be presented to Professor Jordan Raff. Jordan studied Biochemistry as an undergraduate at Bristol University (1983-1986). He then studied for his PhD with David Glover in the Department of Biochemistry, Imperial College London (1986-1989), where he first started to work on centrosomes and cell division in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. He continued to work in this area as a post-doctoral fellow with Bruce Alberts in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco (1990-1994). He started his own group at the Gurdon (formerly Wellcome/CRC) Institute in Cambridge, first as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow (1994-2004) and then as a CRUK funded Research Fellow (2004-2009). He moved to the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford in 2009 to take up the César Milstein Chair of Cancer Cell Biology. He is currently combining genetic, biochemical and cell biological approaches together with advanced microscopy and mathematical modelling to try to understand the fundamental principles that regulate centriole and centrosome assembly. He has always taken a keen interest in promoting the public understanding of science.

Jordan said: “When I look at the previous winners of this prize I am truly astounded to be included in this list. I am very lucky to have worked with a talented group of people who generated the body of work that led to this award, and I should also acknowledge my wife Rachel, who helped support me when I was a relatively poor graduate student, and then took on the majority of the work in bringing up our children. I will always be grateful for all their insights, support and hard work. I’m hopeful that this award will provide a much needed post-covid boost for the lab so we can start to really enjoy doing science again.” 

Jordan presented his Award Lecture at Dynamic Cell V between 17-20 April 2023.