Leeds, England, United Kingdom
I currently supervise about 20 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in my laboratory. In total, 100 PhD students have been, or are being, supervised: some of them are employed in academic research, some 10% have other academic posts, many of the rest have positions such as technical editing and school teaching, and most of the rest have industrial posts. Over 70 post-doctoral research assistants have been or are being supervised; of those who have moved on, about 15% have academic posts, and the majority of others are post-doctoral research in the UK and overseas. I have published more than 370 peer-reviewed papers and spoken at over 450 invited lectures at national and international conferences, including more than 215 invited lectures at international conferences in countries including the UK, Germany, Denmark, USA, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, Italy, France, The Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, Israel, Austria, Canada, Malta, Finland, India and Thailand, and online. In the last five years I have served, or am serving on, 6 major research funding panels, 12 Scientific Advisory Boards at prestigious institutions and 8 editorial boards for leading journals. My prizes and awards include the 1996 Biochemical Society Colworth Medal, the 2005 Royal Society of Chemistry Astra-Zeneca prize in Proteins and Peptides, the 2009 Hites Award from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (joint with Professor Alison Ashcroft), and the Protein Society Carl Branden award in 2013, and the 2015 Rita and John Cornforth Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry (also jointly with Professor Alison Ashcroft). I became a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2010, a Fellow of the Royal Society and an honorary member of the British Biophysical Society in 2014, a Fellow of the Biophysical Society in 2018, Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to molecular biology and a member of Academia Europaea in 2020, and Doctor Honoris Causa honoris causa from the University of Liège in 2022. In 2021 I was made Royal Society Research Professor, and in 2024 won the Biochemical Society Centenary Medal and became an international member of National Academy of Sciences in the USA.
My research is focused on fundamental structural molecular biology, specifically in the measurement of the conformational dynamics of proteins and the elucidation of the role that these motions play in protein folding and misfolding. Using a wide range of biophysical methods and combining these with protein chemistry and molecular biology, my research focus over the last five years has been the delineation of the mechanisms by which proteins misfold, and how dynamic excursions enable proteins to self-associate into amyloid fibrils: the complex macromolecular assemblies associated with some of the deadliest human diseases. My major achievements over the last five years have been the use of mass spectrometry methods, NMR and single molecule methods to characterise the intermediates in amyloid formation, to identify and delineate the mechanisms of action of small molecules able to interrupt protein misfolding and aggregation, and the discovery of how and why different protein-protein interactions propagate amyloid formation whilst others inhibit assembly. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1eK3DLCMcM