Pleasantine Mill has been awarded the 2019 British Society for Cell Biology WICB Early Career Medal, established in 2015 to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the BSCB. The award celebrates early-career women who are making outstanding scientific contributions in cell biology upon establishing their own research group in the UK within the last six years.
Pleasantine joined the MRC Human Genetics Unit following PhD training in Canada. She formed her own research group in 2014 focused on understanding the role of genetic variation of mammalian cilia in a wide spectrum of clinical features in ciliopathy patients. Ciliopathies are a diverse class of human genetic diseases, with over 20 recognized syndromes caused by mutations at ~100 different loci. The Mill lab has built new resources to help to profile different disease-relevant mammalian cilia types in an unbiased and sensitive way.