Adrian Hayday, a Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute,
has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in
recognition of his work on epithelial immune cells.
Royal Society Fellowship is made up of the most eminent scientists,
engineers and technologists from or living and working in the UK
and the Commonwealth. Fellows are elected for life through a peer
review process on the basis of excellence in science. There are
approximately 1,600 Fellows and Foreign Members, including around
80 Nobel Laureates.
Dr Hayday said: "It's a great honour to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. I feel privileged to have pursued a career in investigative biomedical research - discovering the new and, ultimately, contributing to the understanding and treatment of cancer. I am also extremely fortunate to have worked with very talented colleagues and collaborators without whom our progress would not have been possible"
Paul Nurse, Director of the Francis Crick Institute and former President of the Royal Society, said: "This is a well-deserved accolade for Adrian. He is one of the front runners in his field and I'm sure all his colleagues, past and present, join me in offering him congratulations on this significant achievement."
Adrian Hayday FRS is currently based at the Crick's Lincoln's Inn Fields Laboratory. He joined the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute (now part of the Francis Crick Institute) in 2009. In recent years, his group has developed a strong programme in human immunology, including clinical trials applying gamma delta T cells in immunotherapy.
Dr Hayday trained as a biochemist, undertook PhD studies in tumour virology, and then pursued post-doctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he characterised chromosome translocation breakpoints in human B cell lymphomas, and contributed to the identification of the hitherto unanticipated gamma delta T cell compartment by being the first to describe the T cell receptor gamma chain genes.
