Cell News 04/2018
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collaborators, the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge and Kiner-
wunschzentrum Göttingen, for their invaluable help. Finally, I
dedicate this work to all women going through fertility strug-
gles who donated their oocytes to our projects over the years. I
hope that having my motivation further boosted by Nikon and
the DGZ, I will be able to contribute in the coming years to elu-
cidating the molecular basis of chromosome mis-segregation
in human eggs and improving clinical outcomes for couples
struggling with infertility.
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About the author
Agata Zielinska is studying Medicine with an integrated bache-
lor’s degree in Developmental Biology and a PhD in Cell Biology
at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK. After having
successfully completed the first four years of her medical de-
gree, she joined Dr Melina Schuh at the MRC Laboratory of Mo-
lecular Biology in Cambridge, UK to pursue a PhD degree, with
the financial support of the Rosetrees Trust. During the first
part of her PhD, she focused on elucidating the causes of de-
clining egg quality with advancing female age directly in human
eggs. In May 2016, she moved together with the Schuh Lab to
the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen,
Germany to continue her PhD work, this time focusing on devel-
oping new tools to study mammalian meiosis. Agata defended
her PhD in July 2018 and is currently completing the last steps
of her medical training in the UK. She hopes to return to the
fascinating world of mammalian meiosis very soon.
Carien Niessen and prize winner Agata Zielinska (right)
NIKON YOUNG SCIENTIST AWARD 2018
