David Komander, who was a joint PhD student in the laboratories of Daan van Aalten and Dario Alessi, received the Early Career Research Award from the Biochemical Society on 2-April 2009. David is the first recipient of this prestigious and highly sought-after award. After receiving his Medal he gave a stunning talk on the specificity of ubiquitination signalling to a packed lecture theatre at The Dynamic Cell, the Joint Meeting of the Biochemical Society and the British Society for Cell Biology, at the University of Edinburgh. David talked about his recent findings on the three-dimensional structure of linear polyubiquitin chains, how these interact specifically with NEMO (rather than Lys63 linked chains). He also talked about the importance of deubiquitinating enzymes and how A20 might function as a dual Lys63 and Lys48 deubiquitinating enzyme through the use of specific as yet to be identified targeting subunits.