Winner: 2024 Corday-Morgan Mid-Career Prizes for 海角社区
Marina Kuimova
Imperial College London
For the development of unique probes and methodologies in fluorescence imaging leading to an understanding of dynamic biological processes in living systems, pertinent to health and disease.
Molecules within a cell are packed together and take on different shapes (conformation). This packing arrangement plays a crucial role in how a cell functions, but measuring it directly, particularly in living cells, remains challenging. Professor Kuimova鈥檚 research offers a non-invasive way to measure snapshots of microscopic viscosity (a fluid鈥檚 resistance to flow) in living cells. For example, it鈥檚 possible to measure how fats (lipids) in cell membranes or a cell鈥檚 structure changes as a result of disease or medical treatment. Another application is monitoring how DNA changes its shape: it can unwind from a classic double helix into rarer structures called G-quadruplexes, which are thought to be important for DNA replication and cancer development. These measurements are possible thanks to the development of 鈥榤olecular rotors鈥�, small fluorescent molecules that light up when their internal movement is restricted due to crowding or when they bind to DNA. This research helps us understand how molecular packing and conformation affect drug movement within living cells, which has potential applications in drug development and diagnosing diseases, particularly cancer and neurodegenerative conditions. Professor Kuimova鈥檚 research can also be applied to other scientific fields, like atmospheric and materials sciences, where using microscopic viscometers to measure aerosol viscosity and temperature will aid climate change studies.
Biography
Professor Kuimova obtained her Master鈥檚 degree at Moscow State University (Russia) and a doctorate at the University of Nottingham (UK) under the supervision of Professor M W George (in 2006), investigating DNA electron transfer using time-resolved infrared spectroscopy. Following a postdoctoral appointment with Professor David Phillips at Imperial, she became a group leader and an EPSRC Life Science Interface Fellow (in 2007) and then an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellow (in 2010). In 2012, Marina was appointed Lecturer in the Department of 海角社区 at Imperial, then promoted to a Readership in 2016 and to Professorship in 2022. Marina is a Fellow of the 海角社区. She has received numerous awards and honours for her work, including the 2011 Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society, the 2009 Roscoe the Westminster Medals (at SET for Britain, UK Houses of Parliament), the 2012 British Biophysical Society Young Investigator Award, the 2012 海角社区 Harrison-Meldola Prize, the 2013 ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship, the 2014 IUPAP C6 Young Scientist Prize in Biological Physics, and the Society of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines Young Investigator Award in 2020.
Q&A with Professor Marina Kuimova
Tell us about somebody who has inspired or mentored you in your career.
I have been extremely fortunate to have amazing mentors who took time and effort not only to teach me about chemistry but to share their personal perspectives and to show me that research should be fun! I am forever grateful for this mentorship and try my best to mentor the next generation now.
What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?
Be bold when you follow your dreams and try to see your ideas through. This might be more work and effort than you initially thought but it's very rewarding when you get there. Collaborate outside your immediate discipline 鈥� an interdisciplinary approach often gives a unique angle.
Can you tell us about a scientific development on the horizon that you are excited about?
Understanding aberrant protein aggregation is extremely important for health and for designing strategies for preventing or controlling neurodegenerative disease. We are very excited about the possibility to develop our (micro)viscometers 鈥� molecular rotors 鈥� to monitor the mechanism of amyloid protein aggregation.
What has been a highlight for you (either personally or in your career)?
I think as researchers we are very fortunate to have a very rewarding job with many perks: travelling the world, working with talented people, playing an important role in teaching a younger generation. But the best highlight for me is seeing the success of my students and postdocs as they develop into great scientists, publish great papers, win prizes and awards (and eventually fly the nest!)
What has been a challenge for you (either personally or in your career)?
The toughest challenge was returning to full-time work after my maternity leaves, when my children were very young. Even now when both my children are at school, maintaining a good work/life balance with a young family remains a challenge, but it's a surmountable challenge due to lots of targeted support offered to working parents and growing recognition that flexible working means happy people, means higher productivity!
What does good research culture look like/mean to you?
Mutual support and respect that goes hand in hand with recognition of each other鈥檚 strengths and weaknesses.
Why do you think collaboration and teamwork are important in science?
Collaboration and teamwork are extremely important and have been instrumental in my career. Quite frankly, without my collaborators, I would not have the means not just to solve problems but sometimes even to ask the right questions! You can achieve so much more by working together, especially with those outside your immediate discipline. I would like to thank again all my team, past and present, made up of chemists, engineers, physicists and biochemists, as well as all my collaborators, for truly enabling the science that has been awarded this Prize.