President's Award winner

Dr Anne Osterrieder

Oxford Brookes' Dr Anne Osterrieder has been awarded the Society for Experimental Biology's (SEB) prestigious President's Medal in recognition for her work in increasing public understanding of biology.

Anne, who is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant working in Professor Chris Hawes' group in Plant Cell Biology at Oxford Brookes and a regular user of the STFC, CLF OCTOPUS advanced imaging facility, will be presented with her medal for Education and Public Affairs by the Society's President at the SEB's Annual Meeting in Salzburg in June 2012.

The SEB is the leading international society promoting experimental research in biology and its President's Medals are awarded annually to scientists of outstanding merit, normally within 10 years of obtaining their PhD.

Just four President's Medals are handed out each year by the SEB to scientists from across the globe. The awarding of a medal for Education and Public Affairs has only recently been introduced by the SEB and Anne will become the fourth scientist in the world who has received this accolade.

As outreach coordinator for the Oxford Brookes' Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Anne is involved with a large number of public and online engagements which help to raise awareness of plant cell biology and have been recognised with this award.

As well as updating followers through Twitter (link opens in a new window) and on her website, Anne has created a number of innovative animated science videos in collaboration with musicians which help to raise interest in plant cell biology and have been viewed tens of thousands of times.

Anne's current research is focused on studying the formation and structural maintenance of the plant Golgi apparatus which processes, distributes and stores a wide range of important proteins such as storage proteins in cereal grains or proteins involved in plant stress responses.

Her research is carried out in collaboration with Dr Stan Botchway, Dr Mark Pollard and Dr Andy Ward (Central Laser Facility, STFC, Harwell) and Dr Tijs Ketelaar and Dr Norbert de Ruijter (Wageningen University) and has been funded by Oxford Brookes University and the BBSRC.