Professor Sir Mike Ferguson, one of Scotland’s pre-eminent scientists, was recognised for his outstanding research career when he received a Lifetime Achievement Award during a night of celebration for the University of Dundee.
He received the award in absentia at Scotland’s Life Sciences Awards 2026 ceremony in Glasgow due to a pre-existing commitment overseas. Three other University-linked finalists also emerged triumphant at the event.
Dr Andrew Woodland, CEO of Dundee spinouts Tay Therapeutics and Hawkhill Therapeutics, won the Rising Stars: Extraordinary Talent Award, while PhaSER Biomedical, a Dundee spinout led by Professor Roland Wolf, won the Innovative Collaboration Award for their work with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
The Abbott Group’s Dundee site – which began life as Dundee spinout Shield Diagnostics in 1982 – was nominated in the Outstanding Skills Development category.
Professor Sir Mike, Regius Professor of Life Sciences at Dundee, was congratulated on his outstanding contribution to the industry and the impact of his research, which has helped establish the University as an international centre of excellence in life sciences. He said,
"I am honoured to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Scottish Life Sciences Conference and Awards. I am pleased to accept this award on behalf of the many colleagues with whom I have been fortunate to work on promoting both fundamental and translational life sciences in Scotland. I moved to Dundee in 1988 and have never looked back."
“While there is still a lot to do, now is the time to look forward for a bright future for Scottish life sciences. Locally, this will include growing the Tay Cities biomedical cluster, providing employment for school leavers, graduates and post-graduates and retraining opportunities to contribute to the economy."
Professor Sir Mike has published over 250 peer reviewed research papers and is known for solving the first structures of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) membrane anchors, which play important roles throughout eukaryotic biology.
He obtained a PhD in Biochemistry at London University in 1982 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rockefeller University, New York, and at Oxford University. He took up a lectureship at Dundee in 1988 and was promoted to a personal chair in Molecular Parasitology in 1994. In 2013, he was appointed the first Regius Professor of Life Sciences.
Recently, he has been integral to the development of the Growing the Tay Cities BioMedical Cluster component of the Tay Cities Deal and in 2019 was knighted for services to science.
Last year, he received the extremely prestigious Leeuwenhoek Medal of the Royal Society.
Dundee has been ranked as the UK’s top university for Biological Sciences research in the last two Research Excellence Framework exercises. Over the past year, Dundee was also crowned the UK’s Outstanding Entrepreneurial University of the Year (Times Higher Education Awards) and Innovative & Entrepreneurial University of the Year (European Triple E Awards).
