Alessio Ciulli is the first Gates Cambridge Scholar to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Our main goal is to make meaningful advances in fundamental understanding that accelerate the development of new medicines. It is therefore very encouraging to see our efforts acknowledged by the Royal Society.
Alessio Ciulli
Professor Alessio Ciulli has become the first Gates Cambridge Scholar to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society [FRS].
Professor Ciulli, the founder and Director of the University of Dundee’s Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation (CeTPD), is one of over 90 outstanding researchers from across the world to be elected an FRS.
Targeted protein degradation (TPD) is a transformative approach in drug discovery, harnessing the cell’s own waste disposal machinery to eliminate disease-causing proteins. It is applicable across a broad range of therapeutic areas — including cancer, inflammation, metabolic and neurological disorders.
Protein degrader medicines have the potential to be more effective than traditional drugs and offer hope for patients who have no treatment options or who no longer respond to therapies.
Professor Ciulli said: “Being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society is an incredible and humbling honour, and it’s a privilege to be recognised alongside so many esteemed colleagues. Our main goal is to make meaningful advances in fundamental understanding that accelerate the development of new medicines. It is therefore very encouraging to see our efforts acknowledged by the Royal Society.”
Professor Ciulli [2002], who did his PhD in Chemistry on protein-ligand interactions and their importance in biological processes, has been at the University of Dundee since 2013 and was promoted to full Professor in 2016. In 2017, he co-founded Amphista Therapeutics, a company focused on developing drugs based on targeted protein degradation. He became the inaugural Director of CeTPD upon its opening in 2023.
The Royal Society is the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. Previous Fellows include Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein.
Welcoming the new Fellows, Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, said: “The strength of the Fellowship lies not only in individual excellence, but in the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences each new member brings. This cohort represents the truly global nature of modern science and the importance of collaboration in driving scientific breakthroughs.”
