Dario Alessi

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

FRS (born in France, 1967) is a

biochemist Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of "biological ch ...

, Director of the Medical Research Council Protein

Phosphorylation In chemistry, phosphorylation is the attachment of a phosphate group to a molecule or an ion. This process and its inverse, dephosphorylation, are common in biology and could be driven by natural selection. Text was copied from this source, wh ...

and Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC PPU) and Professor of Signal Transduction, at the School of Life Sciences,

University of Dundee , mottoeng = "My soul doth magnify the Lord" , established = 1967 – gained independent university status by Royal Charter1897 – Constituent college of the University of St Andrews1881 – University College , ...

Education and career

He attended high school in Brussels. He graduated from the

University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...

, with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry in 1988, and with a PhD in 1991, where he studied with Ian Trayer and David Trentham. His

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

was with Sir Philip Cohen FRS at the University of Dundee from 1991 to 1997. He became Professor of Signal Transduction at the

in 2003 and Director of the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC PPU) in 2012.

Research

Alessi's work is concerned with unravelling the roles of poorly characterised components which regulate protein phosphorylation or ubiquitylation that have emerged from the genetic analysis of human disease. The aim of his research is to provide new knowledge to enable researchers to devise improved strategies for the treatment of disease. Dario Alessi is also the current Director of the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy Unit (DSTT) that is a unique collaboration between University of Dundee and six major pharmaceutical companies (AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck KGaA, Janssen Pharmaceutica and Pfizer) that aims to accelerate drug discovery in the areas of protein phosphorylation and ubiquitylation. As of 2013 he has written over 180 peer-reviewed papers and has been cited more than 32,000 times, making him one of the most highly cited biochemists in the world.

Awards and honours

Dario Alessi has received many awards, among these the

Colworth Medal The Colworth Medal is awarded annually by the Biochemical Society to an outstanding research biochemist under the age of 35 and working mainly in the United Kingdom. The award is one of the most prestigious recognitions for young scientists in the ...

(1999), the Eppendorf Young European Investigator Award (2000), Philip Leverhulme Prize (2002), EMBO Gold Medal (2005) and the Francis Crick Prize Lecture of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

(2006). He was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

in 2002, Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in 2005, Fellow of the

in 2008 and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2012. In 2023 he was awarded the

Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine Established in 1986, the Louis-Jeantet Prizes are funded by the ''Fondation Louis-Jeantet'' and awarded each year to experienced researchers who have distinguished themselves in the field of biomedical research in one of the member states of t ...

.Louis-Jeantet Prize 2023
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alessi, Dario Living people Alumni of the University of Birmingham Academics of the University of Dundee Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) 1967 births