Kelly Nguyen, Group Leader in the Structural Studies Division at the LMB, has been honoured by the 2026 Blavatnik Awards in the UK as Laureate in the Life Sciences category.
The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK celebrates the most promising researchers working in the fields of Life Sciences, Chemistry, and Physical Sciences and Engineering. Each year, one nominee from each category is named a Laureate of the Blavatnik Awards in the UK with two other researchers recognised as finalists. The Blavatnik Awards are supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and independently administered by The New York Academy of Sciences.
At the LMB, Kelly’s research aims to understand the structure and maintenance of telomeres, the protective nucleoprotein complexes that cap chromosome ends in eukaryotic cells. Her work also explores how the enzyme telomerase restores telomeres lost during genome replication.
Her group’s research has already led to several breakthroughs including the first ever atomic model of human telomerase, revealing a previously unknown histone dimer as a telomerase subunit and a hotspot of premature ageing disease mutations. In particular, her group’s work with electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM) has shown how part of the protein complex shelterin recruits and activates telomerase to extend telomere ends and modulates telomeric nucleosomes. More recently, her group published the first structure of human telomerase in a dimeric formation and demonstrated the importance of dimerization to telomere maintenance. Overall, Kelly’s research has important clinical and therapeutic relevance, as the loss of telomeres is linked to ageing and upregulation of telomerase is highly prevalent in cancers.
Kelly’s research career began with a Ph.B. (honours) degree in Chemistry from the Australian National University, after which she undertook a Ph.D. in Kiyoshi Nagai’s group in the Structural Studies Division at the LMB where she studied the structure and molecular mechanisms of the spliceosome. Her research into telomerase began in 2016, when she moved to the University of California, Berkeley to work with Kathleen Collins and Eva Nogales as a Miller Fellow. She launched her own research group at the LMB in 2019.
Kelly commented: “I am sincerely grateful for this recognition. I would like to thank all members of my group, whose dedication and hard work made this achievement possible. I am also thankful to my colleagues and staff at the LMB, as well as to my mentors and collaborators, for their continued support. Science is truly a team endeavour. Although the path can at times be challenging, the knowledge that our discoveries may one day contribute to improving human health continually motivates us to push boundaries and strive further.”
Kelly has previously been awarded the prestigious 2025 Lister Institute Research Prize, the 2024 Colworth Medal from the Biochemical Society, the 2022 Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators, the 2020 Suffrage Science Award curated by the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences (LMS) and the 2017 Early Career Research Award from the Biochemical Society.
Kelly was honoured at the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK Ceremony on 24th February 2026 and will give a scientific talk at a free public symposium today, the 25th February 2026. She is the fifth LMB scientist to be recognised by the Blavatnik Awards in the UK, after M. Madan Babu and John Briggs in 2018, Madeline Lancaster in 2022 and Tanmay Bharat in 2024.
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