Professorships for Kim Dale and Miratul Muqit

Professor Kim Dale profile

Kim is a researcher in the Division of Cell and Developmental Biology and part of the senior leadership team in the D’Arcy Thompson Unit. Her role in the University covers two key areas, research and internationalisation. Kim said, “I am absolutely delighted to have been awarded a personal chair in recognition of my mixed portfolio role, all aspects of which I thoroughly enjoy, and that is particularly because of the teams of wonderful individuals I have been and am working with, both in the science and leadership roles.”

As a Royal Society University Research Fellow, the broad interest of her laboratory is to further understanding of how several genetic interactions come into play at the earliest stages of development to build the developing embryo. Kim has just been awarded an MRC project grant to further her scientific research programme. This year, Kim was recognised in the annual Student Led Teaching Awards organised by the Dundee University Student Association (DUSA) where she was named best postgraduate supervisor. Kim has also been key to the development of the newly launched MSc by Research programme in the school, for which she is programme lead.

On the international side, Kim is Associate Dean, International, for the School and is also University Academic Lead for International activity in the ASEAN region. Her role is to develop key international partnerships, drive open recruitment and profile raising for the University in the ASEAN region. Highlights include building strong relationships with Taylors University and the British High Commission in Malaysia. Kim also works closely together with Professor David Coates in the strategic development of both prestige and volume partnerships in the ASEAN region and in China to develop and grow the articulation agreements for our UG programmes that we have in place with National University Singapore, Central South University, China, and Xiamen University, China. Kim is also committed to drive outward mobility of our own students and both provides and actively promotes opportunities for our undergraduates to study abroad including implementing summer internships at Taylors University in Kuala Lumpur for undergraduates. Kim also chairs and leads a University wide group to promote outward mobility of students in all 9 schools.

Professor Miratul Muqit profile

Miratul is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science and Programme Leader in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit at the School and an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at Ninewells Hospital. Miratul said "I feel very honoured to have been appointed a Professor. Dundee has been a fantastic place for me to pursue my research and I would like to thank members of my lab and colleagues across the university and hospital who have supported me over the years. It has also been great to collaborate with a number of groups who have made Dundee a major centre for Parkinson's mechanistic research and we are entering an exciting new phase where basic discoveries are now leading to rational drug design and trials for Parkinson's patients".

In 2004 he was a key member of the London-based team that discovered that mutations in a gene known as PINK1 can cause Parkinson’s. He has been based in Dundee since 2008 where he has been working out the mechanism of how disruption of the PINK1 gene leads to Parkinson’s. His laboratory have elucidated the function of PINK1 including identification of its physiological substrates, Ubiquitin and Parkin, and contributed general understanding to the role of PINK1 and Parkin in the removal of damaged mitochondria by mitophagy.

In the past two years, Miratul has been recognised externally for his outstanding research. These include in 2016 being named as an awardee of the prestigious European Molecular Biology Organisation Young Investigator Programme (EMBO YIP). This was followed with the award of the Francis Crick Medal and Lecture by the Royal Society in 2018 in recognition of discoveries that have led to better understanding of the causes of Parkinson’s disease - the first practicing clinician to receive the Crick Medal. He was also awarded the 2018 Graham Bull Prize in Clinical Science and Goulstonian Lecture of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), the first clinician from Scotland to win it for 40 years.