Budding biochemist gains PhD scholarship to Cambridge

U of O press release

A University of Otago biochemistry honours student has received a prestigious Woolf Fisher Scholarship to support her PhD study at Cambridge University.

Nathalie Saurat is one of three Woolf Fisher recipients selected nationally last week. Nathalie plans to pursue her PhD at Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry, where she will research microRNAs (strands of molecules which regulate gene expression).

She says it is her hope that a greater understanding of microRNA action will one day aid in developing new cancer therapies.

The Woolf Fisher Trust offers up to three scholarships each year tenable at the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford for three or four years of postgraduate research leading to a doctoral degree or equivalent.

Commencing in 2010, the scholarships provide each recipient $100,000 of fees and living allowance each year.

Each scholar has been recommended by the New Zealand Vice Chancellors' Committee, and selected by the trustees of the Woolf Fisher Trust, for their outstanding academic and personal abilities.

Those awarded the scholarships will possess many of the qualities admired by the late Sir Woolf Fisher, co-founder of Fisher and Paykel; integrity, kindness and generosity, leadership, boldness of vision and exceptional zeal, keenness and capacity for work.