Tom McWilliams, a postdoctoral researcher with the Ganley and Muqit labs, won the poster prize for Best Basic Science Poster (sponsored by Khondrion) at the recent Wellcome Trust Conference on 'Mitochondrial Medicine: developing new treatments for mitochondrial disease'. The 3-day meeting was held at the Wellcome Genome Campus at Hinxton in Cambridge, and showcased a broad spectrum of research in the field of mitochondrial biology. Tom presented exciting data on his characterisation of an innovative in vivo model developed in the Ganley lab to visualise a form of mitochondrial turnover, termed mitophagy.

Tom's work will give us important insights into the physiological role of mitophagy, a process that has been linked to many diseases ranging from cancer to neurodegeneration. Recently, Tom was also awarded a travel grant from The Guarantors of Brain, who provide funding for clinical and academic neuroscientists to attend conferences and present original research. Tom will use this to attend the prestigious 2016 Gordon Research Conference on Lysosomes and Endocytosis in the United States next month, and give a talk at the Gordon Research Seminar on his recent work on mitophagy.

Congratulations Tom for this achievement!