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York biochemist wins top Early Career Research Award

Posted on 1 April 2014

A scientist in the York Structural Biology Laboratory (YSBL) at the University of York has won a prestigious Early Career Research Award of the Biochemical Society for Biotechnology.

Dr Glyn Hemsworth is involved in research focusing on carbohydrate-active enzymes and their component domains, notably those involved in the degradation of cell walls in plants and biomass conversion.

The Biochemical Society awards recognise the impact of research carried out by early career scientists (with no more than five years’ postdoctoral research experience) who have produced international-quality research outputs, and demonstrate aspirations to achieve world-leading status.

The biennial awards are structured to recognise the breadth of science across the Biochemical Society's eight theme areas.

Dr Hemsworth’s recent publications include papers in Nature and Nature Chemical Biology.  He works with Department of Chemistry colleagues, Professor Paul Walton and Professor Gideon Davies, on a €2.3m ERA Industrial Biotechnology-funded project, CESBIC (“Critical Enzymes for Sustainable Biofuels from Cellulose”), led by York and involving collaborators in Cambridge, Denmark and France.

He joined YSBL in 2009 after completing his PhD at the University of Sheffield under the supervision of Professor Peter Artymiuk. At York, he worked initially with Professor Keith Wilson on an EC-funded project studying the structural biology of nucleoside enzymes from Leishmania and Trypanosoma.

Dr Hemsworth, who joined the Davies group in 2012, said: “It’s a great honour and I’m absolutely delighted to receive this award. I’m hugely grateful to my supervisors, collaborators and other colleagues who have made this possible.”

Recent winners of the Biochemical Society’s Early Career Research Awards include Dr Alison Parkin of the Department of Chemistry (2013, Energy and Metabolism) and YSBL PhD graduate Dr Tracey Gloster (2012, Molecular Structure and Function).

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