Winner of 2015 FAOBMB Young Scientist Award (Female): Dr Urmi Dhagat (Australia)
Dr Urmi Dhagat
St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne Australia
Dr Urmi Dhagat obtained her PhD in 2012 from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Victoria, Australia). During her PhD studies, Urmi used high throughput in silico screening and X-ray crystallography to identify a new class of aldo-keto reductase inhibitors as the first step in the design of novel cancer therapeutics. Urmi published 14 papers (half as first author) over the course of her PhD. In 2012, Urmi was awarded a prestigious NHMRC Early Career Fellowship and took up a post-doctoral fellowship position in the laboratory of Professor Michael Parker at St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research (SVI) in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Since joining SVI, Urmi’s work has focused on understanding how cell signalling receptors function using a combination of structural, functional and biophysical approaches. Urmi is using this knowledge to discover small drug-like molecules that block receptor activation and signalling with the long-term aim of developing these molecules into drugs to treat blood cancers and inflammatory diseases such as arthritis and asthma.
