8 November 2023 – Mary Lyon Medal 2024 Prof Adele Marston

The Genetics Society is delighted to announce Prof Adele Marston, University of Edinburgh, as the winner of the 2024 Mary Lyon Medal.

Adele Marston is a Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh and a Wellcome Investigator. She is the Director of the Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology and the Discovery Research Platform for Hidden Cell Biology.

Adele investigates the fundamental mechanisms by which cells reproduce themselves and transmit their genome to the next generation. She has a particular interest in meiosis, the cell division that generates eggs and sperm. Using budding yeast as a model system, she has defined key concepts of chromosome segregation and investigated how errors in these pathways could account for the high error rates observed in human oocytes.

Adele trained in Biochemistry, gaining a BA from the University of Oxford before completing her DPhil in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, also at the University of Oxford. She carried out postdoctoral work at Harvard University (USA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), where she developed her research interest in meiosis. Since 2005, Adele has led a research group in the Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh, successively funded by a Wellcome Career Development Fellowship, a Senior Research Fellowship and an Investigator Award.

Adele was the Genetics Society Promega Young Life Scientist of the Year (1999) and an EMBO Young Investigator (2010). She was elected to EMBO membership in 2019 and to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2022.