Stephen Taylor#

Current Position

Professor of Cell Biology and Cancer Research UK Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester.

Biography

After completing his Bachelors degree in Biochemistry at the University of Manchester, Stephen moved to the Department of Biochemistry in Oxford to pursue his doctoral studies, working in Prof. Ed Southern’s lab with Chris Tyler-Smith. His graduate work focused on developing mammalian artificial chromosomes in order to define the DNA sequences required for human centromere function.

After completing his PhD in 1995, Stephen moved to Harvard Medical School funded by a Wellcome Trust Traveling post-doctoral fellowship. There, he worked with Prof. Frank McKeon in the Department of Cell Biology, where he discovered several of the mammalian spindle checkpoint components, including Bub1. In 1998, Stephen moved back to Manchester, funded by a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship. In 2004 he was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from Cancer Research UK. In 2009 Stephen renewed his CR-UK Senior Fellowship and was promoted to Professor of Cell Biology.

Stephen won the Translational Research Award from the British Association for Cancer Research in 2004, the University of Manchester’s Kilburn-Williams Medal in 2009, and was elected to Academia Europaea in 2010.

Stephen’s research continues to focus on the spindle checkpoint and other mitotic regulators, for more information see the lab website at www.bub1.com.

Active Research Funding

The role of Cenp-F and Nudel in chromosome segregation (£434,394 BBSRC Project Grant 36 months until 31/11/010).

Probing the in vivo role of the Mps1 kinase using chemical genetics: does pharmacological inhibition of the spindle checkpoint suppress or promote tumourigenesis? (£229,000 Cancer Research UK 36 months until 30/09/11).

Characterising the role of Tao1 during spindle checkpoint activation (£36,000 Wellcome Trust Prize Studentship 36 months until 1/10/11).

Exploitation of mitosis towards developing novel anti-cancer strategies (£1.2M CR-UK Senior Fellowship Renewal 72 months from 1/5/10 to 30/4/16).

Other activities

Since becoming an independent group leader, Stephen Taylor has given 30+ invited seminars, mainly in the UK and Europe but some in the US and one in S.Korea. He has also presented talks at 25+ international conferences.

Stephen Taylor has delivered several public lectures, including talks at Manchester Alumni events. In 2010 he was invited to deliver the Percival Lecture to the Manchester Lit & Phil Society in 2010.

He has won several prizes, including the 2004 Translation Research Award from the British Association for Cancer Research, the Faculty of Life Science’s Best Collaboration with Industry Prize, 2008 and the Faculty of Life Science’s Researcher of the Year, 2009. This latter prize was recognized at University level by being awarded the Kilburn-Williams medal.

With respect to external activities, Stephen Taylor routinely reviews manuscripts for leading journals and, somewhat less frequently, grant applications for a variety of agencies. Recently, he helped conduct mid-term reviews of three group leaders at the CR-UK’s CRI. He also sat on the Academy of Medical Sciences non-clinical careers committee, contributing to their recent report entitled “Redressing the balance: the status and valuation of teaching in academic careers in the biomedical sciences.”

Seven PhD students have now graduated from his lab, two securing Long term EMBO Fellowships allowing them to take up post-doc positions in top US labs. He has served as external examiner for 11 PhD students. While undergraduate teaching has never been a major focus, he has always made a reasonable contribution to the Faculty’s portfolio, including lectures and small group efforts such as tutorials and medical PBL sessions, plus associated examinations etc.

Since joining the Faculty, Stephen Taylor has always been actively involved in leadership activities. Initially he was the Fellows Representative and an MRes coordinator. For two years he was the director of the Graduate Training Program. He served on the Wellcome Trust 4 year PhD Program panel and was Research Group Leader for Molecular Cancer Studies. At the moment, he is Section Head for Cellular Systems, which comprises ~40 academic members of staff.