Anant Parekh has been awarded a Batsheva Prize from the Rothschild Foundation at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. As part of the award, he will visit various Israeli Universities and Research Centres to deliver a lecture entitled: Store-operated calcium channels: gating, regulation and novel target for airway disease.
Anant is Professor of Cell Physiology, Director of the Centre of Integrative Physiology and a Fellow of Merton College at the University of Oxford. He has pioneered research on store-operated calcium channels, discovered how these proteins generate and signal through local Ca2+ microdomains and established a central role for the channels in the development of allergies and asthma.
Anant studied medicine at the University of Oxford, where he also completed his DPhil. He carried out postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, working with Nobel Laureate Erwin Neher, Walter Stuehmer and Reinhold Penner. He returned to Oxford (Physiology) as a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow and then was awarded a Lister Senior Fellowship before joining the faculty in DPAG.
Anant’s awards for his work include the Wellcome Prize (2002) and the GL Brown Prize (2012). He was elected a Fellow of Academia Europaea (2002) and the Academy of Medical Sciences (2011).