Dr. Jill Dixon, who has recently been appointed to a Lectureship in Basic Dental Sciences in the School of Dentistry at the University of Manchester, has been awarded a three year New Investigator Award from the Medical Research Council. The award provides support for clinical and non-clinical researchers in their first steps towards establishing themselves as independent principal investigators. Dr Dixon, whose research interests include the genetic basis of facial disorders, has worked in craniofacial research for the last fourteen years. The aim of her project is to investigate the function of the transcription factor p63 during development of the palate, with the objective of understanding its role in cleft palate. In the short term, it is hoped that the results of this research will help to dissect the role of p63 in normal and abnormal development of the palate, while in the longer term, the information may help in the design of therapies to improve the way in which clinicians manage patients affected by cleft palate.