For the second consecutive year we have successfully secured one of the new highly prestigious Predoctoral Fellowships offered by the Medical Research Council (MRC). David Komander will join the groups of Daan van Aalten and Dario Alessi in June 2002 in a collaborative project to determine the structure of PDK1. David has just graduated from the University of Bochum in Germany with a top class biochemistry degree. He has performed some outstanding research in the laboratory of Daan van Aalten during his diploma thesis which has been submitted for publication. The Predoctoral Fellowship scheme is a new £1million initiative from the MRC launched in October 2000 introducing salaried stipends to outstanding PhD students in MRC Units and Institutes. Only 13 were awarded in 2001 for the whole of the UK.