Sir Kenneth Mather Memorial Prize 2012 – Holly Trochet

The 2012 Sir Kenneth Mather Memorial Prize has been awarded to Holly Trochet for her MSc dissertation work on the heritability of longevity in humans.  Originally trained as a mathematician, Holly moved into genetics through the MSc in Quantitative Genetics and Genome Analysis at the University of Edinburgh.  In her dissertation work she collected data from the National Records of Scotland and, using quantitative genetics approaches, showed that there is strong mother-daughter heritability in longevity, but remarkably lower levels between fathers and sons.  The sophistication of her work, the quality of her writing and her overall achievement in the graduate course together mark her out as an outstanding young researcher in the field.