Professor Azim Surani to give this year’s Linacre Lecture

The annual Linacre Lecture will take place at St John’s College on 20 February and will be given by Professor Azim Surani.

This year’s Linacre Lecture presented by Professor Surani will be entitled ‘Human Germline: The eternal link between all generations’.

Professor Azim Surani PhD CBE FMedSci FRS was born in Kenya and received a PhD in 1975 at the University of Cambridge. He joined the Babraham Institute in 1979 where his research led to the discovery of genomic imprinting in mice.  His interests extended to the epigenetic programming of the genome in early mammalian embryos and germ cells.

In 1992 Professor Surani was elected Marshall-Walton Professor at the Wellcome Trust Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, and the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience.  Currently Director of Research in Germline and Epigenetics Research at the Gurdon Institute, his recent work has focused on the epigenetic mechanism of germ cell specification in mice, and on some of the unique epigenetic programming events in early primordial germ cells.  Professor Surani’s awards include the William Bate Hardy Prize, Associate Fellowship of the Third World Academy of Sciences, Membership of EMBO, Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Fellowship of the Royal Society, and a Royal Medal.

The Linacre Lecture will take place at 5pm on Monday 20 February in the Main Lecture Theatre of the Old Divinity School, St John’s College, and will be preceded by tea at 4.15pm. All members of the University are welcome to attend.