Kristin Balk, who has been undertaking research in Miratul Muqit’s lab funded by a J Macdonald Menzies Charitable Trust Prize Studentship, has successfully defended her PhD. During her studies Kristin has developed improved methods to study PINK1 signalling in cell lines and applied this to uncover a role for mitochondrial E3 ligases in the generation of Phospho-ubiquitin. Her examiners were Alex Whitworth of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit in Cambridge and Gopal Sapkota of School of Life Sciences.

Kristin has secured a place on the prestigious MBA programme of the College des Ingenieurs in France, (https://www.cdi.eu/en/), which develops management skills for outstanding scientists and engineers from across Europe. She will begin her studies in September 2019.