Calum Sutherland, a PhD student in Philip Cohen’s lab from 1993 to 1996, has been promoted to Professor of Molecular Medicine in the School of Medicine, University of Dundee. Calum graduated with a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of St Andrews in 1985, and then spent five years working with pharmaceutical company Glaxo in London before joining Philip’s lab in 1991 where he made seminal contributions to our understanding of how insulin inhibits the protein kinase GSK3 to stimulate glycogen synthesis. After receiving his PhD in 1994, Calum spent four years as an American Diabetes Association Postdoctoral Fellow in Daryl Granner’s lab at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA working on the regulation of gene expression by insulin.

Calum was awarded a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship in 1998, which enabled him to move back to Dundee and become an Independent Investigator in the MRC PPU. In 2003 Calum was awarded a Diabetes UK Senior Research Fellowship and moved his lab to Ninewells Hospital where he was promoted to Reader two years later.

Calum met Yvonne Woods, a student in Philip’s lab, on his return from the USA. They married in 2007 and have a four year old daughter, Saoirse. Yvonne later retrained in Medicine, graduating in 2009. She is now a Consultant Histopathologist.