A leading biomedical scientist of world renown will give a lecture to prospective medical students at the University of Aberdeen on Thursday.
Professor Mark Ferguson, of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester, will deliver the fourth annual Christmas Lecture, organised by the Aberdeen University’s medical faculty and aimed at senior school pupils interested in a career in medicine or science.
The lecture will take place in the Auditorium, The Medical School, Foresterhill, on Thursday, December 16, at 4pm.
Professor Ferguson’s lecture, Birth Defects: Wounds, Sex and Scars: Unexpected Discoveries in Biomedical Research, will describe a number of findings, some made quite accidentally, which have been translated into significant medical advances. It will reflect his research interests, which focus on developmental mechanisms in normal and cleft palate formation, wound healing, particularly the prevention of scarring and stimulation of healing in chronic wounds. He also has an interest in temperature dependent sex determination in alligators and chickens.
A professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester, Professor Ferguson has also served as Dean of the School of Biological Sciences and Head of the Department of Cell and Structural Biology.
He graduated with a first class honours BSc in Anatomy and Embryology from the Queen’s University of Belfast, and holds Fellowships from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Edinburgh, as well as being a founding fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He also serves on a number of international and government committees and was awarded a CBE in the 1999 New Year’s Honours List for services to Health and Life Sciences Foresight.