Biophysical Society Bulletin | March 2019

Biophysicist in Profile

Carol Robinson Areas of Research Membrane protein complexes - particularly their structure and regulation

Institution University of Oxford

At-a-Glance

Carol Robinson , Chair of Doctor Lee’s Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, will deliver this year’s Biophysical Society Lecture at the 63rd Annual Meeting in Baltimore. Learn more about her life and unconventional career path.

Carol Robinson

Carol Robinson grew up in Kent, England attending a local school where, in addition to her academic subjects, she learned practical subjects such as typing, needlework and cookery. Leaving school at 16, she took up a position as a Gas Liquid Chromatographer at Pfizer, where she discovered her love of mass spectrometry. “Although, the 16-year old Carol thought this job title was really good, I didn’t find the work “ It was when I reached the mass spectrometry laboratory that I felt most at home. I really took to it andmade it my career. ” interesting”, she shares. “My role as a technician, however, involved rotations around all the laboratories and it was when I reached the mass spectrometry laboratory that I felt most at home. I really took to it and made it my career.” Working by day on the mass spectrometer, she studied before and after work, completing her undergraduate degree in seven years. In 1980, she was accepted by the University of Cambridge to continue her studies in mass spectrometry and to embark upon her doctorate. She had, by this time, left her post at Pfizer and was able to apply herself full-time to her studies, completing her PhD in just two years. Her unconven- tional path to PhD was to set the trend for her the rest of her career. Early in her time as a postdoc, Robinson made the decision to step away from her career in order to spend time at home with her three young children. During this time she took on a variety of part-time teaching posts that worked with her fam- ily’s schedule, before a chance advertisement she encoun- tered at her local library set her back on the path to academia. The Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford was advertising for a postdoctoral researcher in mass spectrom- etry; despite her eight years away from the field, Robinson

decided to apply, recognizing that her knowledge wouldn’t be as up to date as candidates who were actively engaged in research. Luckily, someone on the hiring committee remem- bered Robinson from her time at Cambridge and decided to take a chance on her, and so in early 1992, she re-entered academia as a postdoctoral researcher in the mass spectrom- etry laboratory at the University of Oxford. This period represented the most challenging in Robinson’s career. She had to learn new skills to keep up with current technology, as well as catch up with advances in her field. “It was a whole new era,” she explains. “From the peptides that I had worked with in my PhD, the field had moved on to whole proteins and nucleic acids — I had a lot of reading to do. As well as getting ‘up-to-speed’ with research in the field, I also had to upgrade my IT and presentation skills which I did over time and with the help of my mentors, courses and seminars.” “ From the peptieds that I had worked with inmy PhD, the field hadmoved on to whole proteins and nucleic acids — I had a lot of reading to do. ” Not only had she soon caught up with current research and updated her skills, but her research was starting to attract attention — so much so that she was able to secure a pres- tigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship that provided her with 10 years of funding. With this funding she started to explore protein folding reactions, monitoring them by mass spectrometry to provide new insight into transient states. In 2001, she returned to the University of Cambridge to continue her research into the mass spectrometry of protein assemblies and to become the first female professor in the department of chemistry. While at Cambridge she carried out her first experiments to determine the overall topology of

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