Christine Ferguson

Senior Editor (U.K.)

Chris Ferguson is our Southern Hemisphere “representative” – born in Zimbabwe and educated in South Africa. She studied Microbiology and Immunology as an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town and discovered the joys of developmental biology as a graduate student at UCT’s Medical School where her Ph.D. focussed on the onset of melanogenesis in neural crest cells. Chris moved to the UK in 1996 and undertook postdoc research in neural crest cell biology at Guy’s Hospital, Kings College London, firstly in craniofacial development with Paul Sharpe’s group and subsequently with Anthony Graham in the Developmental Neurobiology Unit. As a first step on the road to pursuing a career in scientific communication, Chris trained as a commissioning editor on the Trends review journals, after which she took up the role as Editor of Trends in Immunology and ran the journal for two and half years. She resigned to join the team of editors at PLOS Biology in March 2007. Chris is thrilled at the opportunity of being able to combine the love of these diverse areas of biology and communication in one job and all towards a very “open” and worthy end!