An interview with Pleasantine Mill, winner of the 2025 BSDB Wolpert Medal

Pleasantine Mill is awarded the 2025 British Society for Development Biology (BSDB) Wolpert Medal, which recognises an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to the teaching and communication of developmental biology.

Congratulations on winning the 2025 BSDB Wolpert medal! What does this mean to you?

It’s a really great honour. Lewis Wolpert was such an amazing figure in terms of his contributions to science and his ability to communicate science effectively to different audiences. Receiving a medal named in his honour is huge, particularly at this point in time, when science is under threat, when there is a heightened urgency of getting all parties to engage with the importance of research, basic science and discovery. This threat expedites a need to bring together communities and stakeholders to champion science. To be recognised for it means so much to me personally.

A few years ago, you were awarded the Woman in Cell Biology Early Career Award from the British Society for Cell Biology – you’ve managed to receive awards from both British societies!

It’s a lovely reflection of where we sit in terms of our research focus. What my team do is very cell biology, because we’re interested in centrioles and cilia, but leverage genetics and genomics to understand the molecular mechanisms at play in development and how they go wrong in disease. So really what we do is cell biology on an organismal scale, looking at how different cell types, developmental stages or disease states are dependent on cilia. So it’s very nice to be recognised by both societies!

Can you briefly talk about your career so far and what your research interests are?

I did my undergrad in Immunology and Microbiology at McGill University in Montreal because it seemed an exciting time to be doing immunology, but in practice, I found the coursework was a lot less engaging. I started to wander a bit and stumbled onto Genetic Engineering. I went to the University of Toronto Medical and Molecular Genetics Department for my PhD, which was a rotation-based system, and fell into by my first and lasting love with developmental biology. I joined the lab of Chi-chung Hui, a mouse developmental geneticist studying Hedgehog signalling and the role of the GLI transcription factors. Here, we had all these cool genetic tools and techniques, with which we could generate and study all these amazing ‘shock and awe’ phenotypes! I was hooked with genetics. When I left CC’s lab after my PhD, I wanted to try something really new and undertook a forward genetic screen in mice, so as not to make any assumptions about the system I was studying, in this case neural crest development. That was when I stumbled into the wonderful world of cilia. Almost all the genes we pulled out were involved in cilia structure or function, which were ironically also all involved in Hedgehog signalling. From there, the jump to human disease was easy as cilia play major roles in rare disease genetics – it was an easy segue for my independent research focus. Like our genetic screens, the unusual phenotypes in rare disease patients are sometimes the ones that are the most informative in terms of understanding how a gene works in complex processes. That’s the space that we’ve stayed in since then.

You’re currently the guest editor of Journal of Cell Science’s Special Issue – Cilia and Flagella. What are you most excited about in this special issue and in the field?

Thrilled to be guest editing it with Lotte Pedersen. We’re still accepting papers until 31 March 2025 and I’m excited about what is taking shape for this Special Issue! For example, we have commissioned both established experts and up-and-coming talent on everything from cilia disassembly, to deep dives into different ciliary compartments and we are even wading into the hot debate around condensates and their role in motile ciliogenesis. We’ve even got a perspective piece from our rare disease patient community about how to form effective partnerships and patient-centric research too.

For the field in general, I think there’s a lot of interesting work that’s going on in terms of how we understand the differences between different cilia types. There are exciting technology and tools to capture organelle-level changes in content during disease, developmental time, or even with the cell cycle, then tying this to how these change cellular signalling outputs and contribute to phenotypes. Real biology across scales! There is still a tendency to think of cilia from a cell biology aspect, as being in a dish and pointing up in the media. But in fact, as we know from being developmental biologists, cilia are often involved in much more complex interactions in the 3D space, often interacting with cellular structures or even other cilia. Live imaging, light-sheet and volumetric EM techniques- we now are really pushing our ability to look at these inter-organelle or contacts in situ, discovering new cilia synapses. Testing what they mean functionally will be our field’s next big frontier!

You are part of the team leading the UK Cilia Network. How did you get involved initially, and how’s your experience been?

Almost ten years old, the UK Cilia Network aimed to join up the existing regional cilia-focused groups across the country. It planned to hold national yearly meetings that would rotate around the country, to highlight expertise and to facilitate collaboration and exchanges. I got asked to be on the leadership team, because they were looking for more junior people to help shape the vision going forward. And then COVID hit, and the UK Cilia Network turned into something very different partly as a result of the e-symposia series. It is great – the network has now more of an online presence, with the website as an international landing page to help individuals raise their profile and build their networks. It’s got such a strong brand now. We’re discussing whether we have outgrown the UK and whether there’s an opportunity to help create a truly international ‘society’ for cilia, which the UK Cilia Network would be part. So that’s an exciting next chapter for me. We’ve already had some early meetings with leaders across Europe, North America and Asia. On an international scale, it would be a way to raise the profile of individuals, whether you have a national network or not in your country. We would look to facilitate collaborations, highlight opportunities, as well as minimise conflicts between meetings internationally and the competition for limited resources. Importantly too, it would be looking to connect ciliopathy patients and their organizations internationally and nationally too.  

Another thing we’ve done recently is to formally extend our network to the centrosome community. The centrosome (and centrioles) are also very closely associated with cilia, but not in the name, and as a result some people feel excluded. There are also a group of rare diseases, the centrosomopathies, for which the patient groups and clinical teams could benefit from closer ties to researchers, as the ciliopathy community has benefited from. So, we are in the process of rebranding as the UK Cilia and Centrosome Network.

You started organizing the UK Cilia Network e-symposia during the early 2020 lockdowns and since then it has been running strong. What motivated you to start the symposia?

In 2020, I was organising the in-person UK Cilia Network Spring meeting right after the UK Microtubule Meeting in Edinburgh that early April. We’d already done tonnes of organising when everything shut down. Having just come through my own promotion and tenure process within the University, I immediately recognised how important it was for people to be invited to speak at key meetings. There were going to be damaging lapses in people’s CVs as a result of lockdowns, unless we created a forum where they could be invited to and speak. We could keep people connected and focused on the future by sharing great science. The real push for the e-symposia was making sure that we could showcase these amazing junior people even in a shutdown and create something that people could count on when everything seemed uncertain. Like real life meetings, the e-symposia also allowed people to find collaborations and build new networks. Indeed, there have been papers from collaborations that formed from the first few symposia during COVID have now been published. Amazing! We have now nearly 1500 people registered for the symposia from all over the world. We’re still hitting about 250 people with another 150 watching the recording. Even though the pandemic’s gone, the community stayed.

Apart from engaging with the research community, have you been involved in policy and public outreach activities?

On the policy side, I’ve done some advising and written whitepapers on genome editing technologies, rare diseases and expediting genetic diagnoses. We’ve worked closely with philanthropic funders for their rare disease and patient partnerships space to decide priorities and evaluate subsequent funding calls. I sit on several scientific advisory boards for various charities. Patient engagement and involvement within the rare disease space internationally is something I have been very involved with. We’ve run workshops, outreach activities and more.

When I initially started as a postdoc years ago, a bunch of us piloted an Edinburgh Science Fringe Festival that ran in parallel with the Edinburgh International Science Festival, aimed at engaging hard-to-reach groups from different backgrounds with cool science and innovating technology. We ran a series of ‘disruptive’ events on the science of beatboxing, big wave surfing and sci-art collaborations. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work!

Any memorable/proudest moments when participating in these research-adjacent activities?

There are a lot of highs – I would struggle to find that just one! Last October, we helped PCD Research organise and run our Rare Disease Industry Accelerator Day: Getting Cilia Moving at the Crick. We attracted over 120 attendees from industry, investors, clinicians, policy makers and patient groups – from basic research through to rare disease clinical trials for the conditions I study for our research in the lab. It was a hugely successful event to join up some of the dots within this rare disease space for the benefit of patients.

Have you ever received any pushback from say, reviewers or funding bodies, about the time you spend on community work instead of ‘actual research’?

No, not yet. But your best response to any criticism like this is by evidence of the papers you publish and the funding you get. You demonstrate it by continuing to do excellent research and engage multiple stakeholders. It’s easy to get caught into these disputes with people who feel that what you’re doing is not important and question the value it brings, but you can lead by example. All the community work is incredibly important, more so than ever. We all need to do it!

How do you approach teaching and mentoring?

At the moment, I am fortunate not to have to do lot of teaching. I do a bit of graduate level teaching, usually on topics that I feel passionate about, such as ciliopathies and genome engineering. I do lots of supervision for my team, with a lab of two-three PhD students and multiple postdocs. It’s not just about science and research progress, but it’s about thinking about their career development and their next career steps, acting a lot like ‘talent management’, which needs adapting as everyone is different.

Outside my own team, I do a lot of mentoring too. I think you can be a more effective mentor if you’re not also in the role of supervising. Mentoring for me has been about helping people transition through various points, from postdoc to PI, or new PI onto tenure. Practically it means helping with writing applications, mock interviews and practice pitches, but also in terms of acting as a sponsor, putting them forward for talk invites and other ways of promoting their careers. I’m very happy to do that because I was helped very much by other people along my own career.

Any advice to early career researchers who are keen to be involved in more in these research-adjacent work?

Scientific societies and charities are always really keen to have people get involved. Whether it is being the representative of a society, writing articles, organizing events, or helping with lay summaries for websites- it’ll be time well spent. You’ll build your CV, help you with your next steps wherever you go, and hopefully make you feel more connected to the community too, outside your own project. For postdocs, most universities have these ten Professional Development Concordat days per year pro rata, which guarantee time for your own career development. This could be working with an open access publisher, a society, or a patient group too. I think in most cases as long as it doesn’t cut too much into your science, your supervisor would generally encourage it. I think everybody benefits down the way when you allow your students or postdocs to be able to take these things on.

How do you balance the time and effort required for your research and community work?

Because time is elastic, isn’t it? [laughs] When you prioritise things that you really enjoy doing, they don’t seem like much work. You can kind of create time for it. Science has a lot of ups and downs, so those community-based connections can actually help create a buffer when the lows hit.

How do you navigate the academic career alongside having a family?

Having a family is one of those things that gives people more resilience, because you have something outside of work to ground yourself with at the end of the day. Whatever that may be, it is important but doesn’t have to be family. I do think it is generally more complicated for women starting out, because at the times we’re expected to be the most productive in terms of career, we’re also the most reproductive. But being in places that support you really help and leadership that recognise that these are just short-term gaps in research outputs for key rising talent. There is also more acceptance and policies in place, such as childcare awards and ‘roving’ maternity technical cover to minimize disruption. But for every step forward, there is a shadow when we look across the pond to the US, there’s pushback on feminism, women in science and what this would mean for a generation of working moms. I think we really can’t take any of this for granted. It’s important here in the UK that we talk about it, showcase up-and-coming scientists with kids and give them the opportunities to excel.

Any final thoughts about doing community work as part of being a scientist?

I try to lead by example that community work is absolutely imperative to what we do – it makes our research more effective and hopefully sustainable in the long run. I encourage my team to be involved in whatever they’re passionate about, and that will be different for everyone. I have a senior scientist who’s extremely driven to improving research culture. She’s one of the eLife ambassadors and plays key roles locally in helping our institute shape its own research culture piece. Other members are very passionate about improving in equality, diversity and inclusion.

I think science is becoming increasingly political right now, so it’s important to take stock and fight for what we want when it’s under threat. We need to be scientists who advocate for science and do it in demonstratable ways, so that everyone understands what’s going on in this space. The more we talk about science, the more people – up to government and down to average Joe on the street – value science, and we minimize this threat. It is so important, at this particular point in time, that every scientist continue to develop these key skill sets.

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