Now to cross fingers that the European Court of Justice does not make stem cell patenting illegal.

Professor Swedlow, named `Innovator of the Year’ at the BBRSC’s Excellence with Impact Awards, received the £4.2m grant for "The Open Microscopy Environment: image informatics for biological sciences"

“It is not only a recognition of the quality of work done by the Open Microscopy Environment team based in our Wellcome Trust Centre, it is confirmation that Dundee is a significant hub in biosciences research and continues to thrive and grow,”
said Professor Swedlow.

"The rise of quantitative biology has driven the generation of ever increasing stores of experimental data. Our team at the Open Microscopy Environment (OME) has built open software tools that enable access, analysis, viewing and sharing of large data sets. Initially for light microscopy we have successfully extended the tools to many other domains of biological imaging.”

The OME data-sharing software recently won them the accolade of “Innovator of the Year” and “Social Innovator of the Year” at the BBRSC’s Excellence with Impact Awards, recognising the team and Dundee’s significant contribution to knowledge-sharing, world-wide.

“In this newly-funded project, we aim to make OME’s tools widely used by biologists all ove the world,” says Professor Swedlow. The funding will support a total of 25 posts, 16 of them at Dundee, and the rest at collaborating universities in the UK, USA, France and Italy.

Professor Tom Owen-Hughes has received over £2m from Wellcome Trust to continue  basic research into  mechanisms for remodelling chromatin structure.

In response to the news Professor Owen-Hughes said, “My research team benefit from the long term vision shown by The Wellcome Trust in funding basic research into processes such as gene regulation which lie at the heart of all biological systems. We are also fortunate to have a
critical mass of facilities and expertise available in Dundee.” The grant will support six positions within Professor Owen-Hughes’ team.