Interview with the 2025 BSCB Women in Cell Biology Early Career Medal Winner Helen Weavers

Helen Weavers is an Associate Professor in Cell and Developmental Biology and a Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the University of Bristol in the UK. She earned her PhD at the University of Cambridge studying Drosophila renal morphogenesis in Helen Skaer's lab, then moved to Bristol for her postdoc with Paul Martin and Will Wood, where she first began delving into the intracellular processes involved in tissue repair and inflammation. Her foundational training in developmental biology has now led her, since starting her own lab in 2018, to take a whole-tissue and whole-organism perspective on understanding cellular mechanisms of resilience over an organism's life course – how cells and tissues resist and recover from everyday stressors, like metabolic byproducts, inflammation or external toxins – using advanced in vivo imaging. Helen received the 2025 Women in Cell Biology Early Career Medal from the British Society for Cell Biology (BSCB) in recognition of her outstanding and innovative research. We spoke with Helen about what it means to receive this award as a recent first-time mother, the nuances and patterns of resilience mechanisms within tissues, and how she stays resilient in her career.