Laura Pearce was awarded her PhD on November 18th on her work characterising the mechanism by which PROTOR regulates mTORC2. Her examiners were Chris Proud of the University of Southampton and Calum Sutherland of Ninewells Hospital, Dundee. Laura plans to undertake her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Sadaf Farooqi at the University of Cambridge after she completes her work on PROTOR and submits her latest paper in this area. Laura Pearce is Dario Alessi's 17th student to be awarded a PhD.