Host: Philip Cohen

Venue: Sir Kenneth and Lady Noreen Murray Seminar Room, CTIR 2.84

About the speaker:

Rosie is a young Principal Investigator who joined the Department of Neuroscience one year ago, which is located on the Ground Floor of SLS in the MSI building. A US citizen born and brought up in Southern California, Rosie then moved to Scotland, where she obtained a B.Sc in Biochemistry from the University of St Andrews, Scotland and then a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. She returned to the USA to carry out postdoctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, before accepting the offer of a Lectureship from the Department of Neuroscience at Dundee. The seminar will be of particular interest to all those interested in the molecular causes of neurodegenerative diseases.  Students in SLS may be interested to know that both of Rosie’s parents, Michael Jackson and Clare MacGowan, obtained their PhDs in the Biochemistry Department at Dundee from 184-1987 long before the Departments of Biochemistry, Biological Sciences and Anatomy and Physiology merged to form the School of Life Sciences in 2000. Clare MacGowan was a student in Philip Cohen’s lab and Michael Jackson’s supervisor was Brian Burchell, who later became Dean of the Medical School at Dundee.

 ‘The autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman’ is a 1971 fictional history of 110-year-old African American woman, Jane Pittman. The novels uses Jane’s narrative to trace her life from enslavement at the end of the American Civil War through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The film touches on themes such as emancipation, racial violence and Black resistance in the rural South of America.

All students and staff are welcome. Popcorn is provided and please feel free to bring your own drinks.

Venue: Ian Lowe Centre in the School of Medicine, Ninewells

It is hard to believe it’s been 40 years since graduating from the University of Dundee. Now, you are welcomed back to come and celebrate your 40-year reunion.  

A fantastic programme of informal and formal events is being planned over the course of the weekend. We really hope to see you there.  

The main event will be a dinner on Saturday 26 September 2026 at The Verdant Works in Dundee. 

At this time, we are simply looking to connect with as many members of the 86 Year Club as possible. To that end you’re asked to complete a personal expression of interest form (we’ll ask about partners etc later).  

To ensure we get hold of the whole of the 86 Year Club, can we ask you to share the link to this form with any Year Club members that you keep in touch with, asking them to complete their own expressions of interest?  

Even if you won’t be able to come, there will be elements of the Reunion that you can enjoy. We are also keen to benefit from your input. There is no financial commitment at this stage. That will come later, once we have a more detailed programme and costing.  

We aren’t going to be prescriptive about people graduating in 1986. There were many members of the Year who graduated in different years. They too would be welcome to attend. 

At this stage, we ask that you do the following:

• Complete this expression of interest form below.
• Block off the weekend in your diary.
• Share the link with any Year Club members you have contact details for.
• Pull out any archival material you hold from your time in Dundee (photos, articles, documents etc). We hope to produce some sort of online Year Book for the Reunion, so your input to that is critical.
• Let us know if you can help with the organisation of the Reunion weekend. 

The University of Dundee is supporting the Reunion from an administrative and logistic perspective. Any questions you send in to them will be passed on to the ‘team’ who have started the process off. More detailed information will follow in due course, once we have made contact with all members we can reach. 

We look forward to welcoming you back to Dundee in a year’s time.  

The DUMS 86 Year Club