Cheryll Tickle is a developmental biologist who investigates how complex organisms arise from single, fertilised eggs during embryonic development. As a model for these larger processes, her work focusses on the development of vertebrate limbs and the processes that ensure that these appendages form in the correct places.

Her work has helped to identify the molecular network that guides the development of vertebrate limbs, along with improving our wider understanding of the various vertebrate body plans and how they evolved. Cheryll is also developing an online archive from which other researchers and members of the public will be able to access records of her work.

In addition to being a Fellow of the Royal Society, Cheryll has been elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Biology. She received a CBE in 2005 for services to biology.