For forty years, SCI has supported and recognised the excellence of early career scientists, by aiding their studies in the form of an SCI Scholarship.
Since 1985 more than 80 scholarships have been awarded which have not only given the recipients financial assistance, but have enabled them to broaden their network, and strengthen their skills and knowledge. SCI Scholars receive access to publishing and mentoring opportunities and are given a platform to present their work amongst esteemed scientists and industrialists, raising their profile within the scientific community.
We are delighted to announce that Emilia Taylor, from the University of Oxford, has been awarded an SCI Scholarship of £5,000 over two years to support her PhD project.
In addition to the scholarship, Emilia will benefit from publishing opportunities, access to a high-calibre network to help launch her career, and opportunities to present her work and raise her profile within the scientific community.
SCI Scholarships are prestigious and well respected by the industry. The SCI Scholars Fund was established in 1920 by the requests of Rudolph Messel and John Gray, both former presidents and founding members of SCI. SCI believes in nurturing the scientists of the future. Each year, SCI provides scholarships and bursaries to early career scientists including opportunities to attend or present at an international conference.
"I am a DPhil candidate in Chemical Biology at the University of Oxford, developing a new class of antimicrobials designed to tackle the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR is a global health emergency, driven by the widespread emergence of bacterial strains that no longer respond to conventional antibiotics. Despite decades of research, few novel antibacterial classes have reached the clinic, while resistance continues to outpace drug development. My research addresses this gap by applying targeted protein degradation, an approach inspired by mammalian PROTACs to bacterial systems.
"My PhD project focuses on the development of BacPROTACs: bifunctional molecules that induce the selective degradation of bacterial resistance proteins by hijacking bacterial proteolytic pathways. These bifunctional molecules simultaneously engage a resistance-conferring protein and a bacterial protease, bringing them into proximity to trigger targeted protein degradation. This strategy offers a novel mechanism to resensitise bacteria to existing antibiotics by degrading resistance-inferring proteins. I've established a modular synthetic platform for the rapid assembly of BacPROTACs, alongside developing several in vitro biochemical assays to evaluate target binding, inhibition and degradation activity. She is also working in collaboration with AstraZeneca’s proteomics facility to characterise degradation selectivity and identify off-target effects at a global proteome level.
"Prior to starting my DPhil, I completed an MRes in Drug Discovery at Imperial College London, working on the development of chemical probes targeting bacterial DNA repair enzymes under the supervision of Professor Ed Tate. I previously graduated with First Class Honours in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Leeds, undertaking multiple research projects spanning Medicinal Chemistry. Following my studies, I joined AstraZeneca’s R&D graduate programme in Gothenburg, Sweden, contributing to several targeted protein degradation projects across early CVRM and Discovery Sciences. My work covered nano-PROTAC synthesis and crude reaction screening, mass spectrometry-based ubiquitinomics, and functional genomics."
Emilia Taylor, University of Oxford
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