Dr Ling Felce: creating a living legacy
One year after the tragic death of Dr Ling Felce as she cycled in Oxford, colleagues, family and friends are building a legacy to honour her life and her extraordinary talent by supporting other bright young scientists to realise their potential.
The CAMS-Oxford Institute (COI), where Ling formed part of Professor Tao Dong’s research group, launched an appeal for the Ling Felce Memorial Fund in September 2022. The resulting Ling Felce Award will provide researchers with the opportunity to learn key bioinformatic analysis skills through a dedicated programme at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (MRC WIMM). Ling herself completed the programme, which had a transformative impact on her career path.
Before she completed the Oxford Biomedical Data Science (OBDS) course at the MRC WIMM, Ling was a wet lab scientist, doing experiments every day. The skills she acquired on the programme enabled her to transition to working in Professor Dong’s research group. Professor Dong has commented on the great effort that Ling made to get to know all of her new colleagues despite the fact that interactions during her first year were via Zoom. Ling quickly became a beloved member of their lab family.
Dr Dannielle Wellington, Training Programmes Coordinator at the CAMS-Oxford Institute, was Ling’s colleague. She explains why awarding funding for the OBDS course is such a fitting tribute to Ling: ‘I was a postdoc in Professor Dong’s group when Ling joined as a senior bioinformatician, so we worked together and became friends. The OBDS course really fuelled Ling’s interest in the field of bioinformatics and really pushed her to the higher levels of her academic career.’
‘Now we want to give other people the opportunity to do the programme and support their career progress.’
— Dr Dannielle Wellington
The Ling Felce Award is of considerable value for those who qualify for it. ‘Most scientific projects now have a bioinformatic element to them,’ says Dannielle. ‘There’s a lot more that we can do in terms of deep sequencing and looking at genetic and protein profiles that can explain a lot in the cell, so many more people are going to need these skills and this course can definitely give you an advantage.’
The cost of the programme is significant: funding three students annually at a cost of around £1,000 a week for the duration of a four- to six-week course means that around £16,000 a year is required. Professor Dong has committed £15,000 per year to the fund and additional funding will come from donations.
Dr Guihai Liu, who recently completed her DPhil studies, is the first recipient of the award. She says: ‘I am really grateful for my Ling Felce Award-funded place on the OBDS training course. Ling was an expert in bioinformatics and helped me a lot with analysis for my DPhil project. Her enthusiasm motivated my interest in analysing large-scale datasets. My DPhil project required extensive bioinformatics analysis. The intensive and formal training has hugely increased my knowledge and helped me understand how to analyse my data.’
The Ling Felce Award will also contribute to other career development opportunities for early career researchers. Dannielle says: ‘In COI we have career development fellows who receive funding to go on leadership programmes — a key stepping-stone in the progression from a postdoctoral position to becoming an independent group leader.’
‘We think that Ling would have become one of these career development fellows in the future — that was what Tao had planned for her — so some funding for that will also now be provided by the Ling Felce Award to enable others to progress along this pathway.’
— Dr Dannielle Wellington
The Ling Felce Bioinformatics Suite at the CAMS-Oxford Institute officially opened at a memorial event for Ling’s friends and family in September 2022. Through this permanent presence at her place of work and through the Ling Felce Award creating opportunities for other talented scientists to progress in their careers, Ling’s legacy of talent, excellence and friendship will live long into the future.
Give to the Ling Felce Memorial Fund.
Read more about Ling Felce and her work here.
