News

The Lister Prize, awarded by the Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine, is one of the most prestigious awards for biomedical researchers in the early years of establishing their research groups. Each Fellow receives a lump sum of £300,000 in flexible funding over five years, giving Fellows the freedom to take their science in bold new directions. Prize recipients also join a community of current and former Lister Fellows and benefit from mentorship at the Lister’s Annual Fellows Meeting.

“I am thrilled that Anjali and Girish have been awarded Lister Prize Awards: they are both exceptional scientists with bold and important plans. These prizes will add rocket fuel to their already exciting trajectories.” said our Head of Department, Prof Matthew Freeman. “At the Dunn School we take seriously our responsibility to early career colleagues and we do all we can to provide the support and scientific environment that allows them to thrive.’

Anjali Hinch’s group studies the mechanisms of meiosis and germline mutagenesis, with a focus on their impacts on human health. A recipient of a Wellcome Trust Henry Dale Fellowship and a Wellcome-Beit Fellow, she started her career in finance, before completing a PhD at Oxford in computational genomics. She initially established her group at the Oxford Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, before moving to the Dunn School in 2024.

The Lister Research Prize will enable her to expand her lab’s work into a new area: understanding how ageing affects the genome of human oocytes. Oocytes must maintain their genomes for decades before fertilisation, making them one of the longest-lived cell types in the body. Anjali’s group will combine large-scale human genomics with experimental biology to understand how DNA damage arises and is repaired in ageing oocytes, and how failures of these processes contribute to reproductive ageing. The work aims to provide new insights into fertility decline, miscarriage, and the broader challenge of preserving genome integrity over the lifespan.

“I’m thrilled to receive the Lister Research Prize. Ageing of the human egg cell has profound consequences not only for fertility and pregnancy, but also for how people plan their lives and families. Despite this, many of the underlying biological processes remain poorly understood.” said Anjali “The Prize gives my group the freedom to pursue ambitious new questions at the intersection of genomics, ageing, and reproductive biology, and I’m incredibly excited to see where this new direction leads. I’m also delighted to join the Lister community, whose breadth of scientific expertise makes it such a unique environment for new ideas.”

Girish Mali’s group works on the assembly mechanisms of ciliary dynein motors, supported by an MRC Career Development Award and a Springboard Award (Academy of Medical Sciences and Wellcome). He completed a PhD at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh and a postdoc at the MRC LMB in Cambridge, starting his independent career as a lecturer at the University of Bristol. He moved his group to the Dunn School in 2023. The Lister Research Prize will allow Girish to launch new lines of investigation in his lab, in collaboration with the James and Lillian Martin Centre for Stem Cell Research, headed by Dr Sally Cowley, to better model and understand Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD). PCD is a rare, incurable and potentially fatal human disease characterised by chronic lung infections due to defective dynein-driven ciliary motion. An overarching goal of Girish’s research is to investigate the molecular causes of faulty cilia and find new therapeutics to repair them in PCD.

“It is a tremendous honour for myself and my group to be awarded the Lister Prize this year.” said Girish, “The timing is key. The Prize will allow us to embark on exciting new lines of inquiry to address an unmet medical need – understanding PCD, which is a rare disease, with the aim to finding a cure. I am genuinely delighted to be joining the Lister community. I very much look forward to expanding my scientific network and developing new collaborations.”

Anjali and Girish are 2 of only 8 researchers across the UK & Ireland to be awarded this year’s prize. Previous Dunn School Lister Prize winners include Alexander Borodavka and Tanmay Bharat (now at the LMB, Cambridge).