Professor Robin Franklin elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
10 May 2022
Emeritus Fellow Professor Robin Franklin FMedSci has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of 62 scientists honoured this year for their exceptional contributions to science.
Robin's principal research focuses on how tissues regenerate. To address this question, he has studied the brain, an organ notorious for its poor regenerative capacity. Working with many excellent colleagues, he has described how stem cells in the adult brain regenerate oligodendrocytes - the cells responsible for making the insulating myelin sheath around nerve fibres - once they are lost in diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS); how this process declines with age; and it can be reversed. The work has led to two regenerative medicine trials in MS.
He said: “I am absolutely delighted to have been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society - it is a huge honour.”
Robin was previously the Professor of Stem Cell Medicine, Wellcome - MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. In March this year he joined Altos Labs - Cambridge Institute as Principal Investigator, where he will develop multidisciplinary collaborative links to further explore the underlying mechanisms of adult somatic stem cell aging.
Elected an Emeritus Fellow in 2022, Robin joined Pembroke as Smith Kline Beecham Fellow in Neurobiology in 1995. In 2005 he was appointed Professor of Neuroscience by the University of Cambridge and became Professor of Stem Cell Medicine in 2014. Between 2005 and 2020 he was also Director of the UK MS Society Cambridge Centre for Myelin Repair. In 2017 he was awarded the Barancik International Prize for Research Innovation and in 2021, the King Faisal Prize for Medicine.
Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society said: “It is an honour to welcome so many outstanding researchers from around the world into the Fellowship of the Royal Society.
“Through their careers so far, these researchers have helped further our understanding of human disease, biodiversity loss and the origins of the universe. I am also pleased to see so many new Fellows working in areas likely to have a transformative impact on our society over this century, from new materials and energy technologies to synthetic biology and artificial intelligence. I look forward to seeing what great things they will achieve in the years ahead.”
The Royal Society was founded in the 1660s and is a self-governing Fellowship made up of the most eminent scientists, engineers and technologists from the UK and the Commonwealth. It's purpose is to recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity. Its Foreign Members are drawn from the rest of the world.
View Robin's profile on the Royal Society's website.
Image: The entrance to the Royal Society by Tom Morris
