Jane Clarke (scientist)


Jane Clarke is an English biochemist and academic. Since October 2017, she has served as President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. She is also Professor of Molecular Biophysics, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. She was previously a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Early life and education

Clarke was born Jane Morgan in London on 10 September 1950. She was educated at the University of York where she graduated with a first-class honours degree in biochemistry in 1972. She went on to study for a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at the University of Cambridge in 1973. Clarke was a science teacher in several secondary schools, and a Head of Science at Northumberland Park School, Tottenham, from 1973 to 1986. Clarke married Christopher Clarke in 1973 with whom she would go on to have one son and one daughter.
She returned to research, gaining a Master of Science degree in applied biology in 1990 from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1993 for investigations of Bacterial Ribonuclease from the University of Cambridge supervised by Alan Fersht.

Research and career

Clarke was appointed a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in 2001, a Professor of Molecular Biophysics in 2009 and a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 2010. On 1 October 2017, she became the President of Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Clarke's research investigates protein folding, in particular:
  1. Studies of Structurally Related Proteins
  2. Multidomain Proteins: Effects of Sequence on Folding and Misfolding
  3. Folding and Assembly: Intrinsically disordered proteins
Clarke's research has been funded by the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and has been published in peer reviewed scientific journals including Biochemistry, Structure, the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the Biophysical Journal, Nature, Science, PNAS, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Current Opinion Structural Biology and the Journal of Molecular Biology.

Awards and honours

In 2010, Clarke was awarded the US Genomics award from the Biophysical Society. Clarke was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2013. Her nomination for the Academy of Medical Sciences reads: Clarke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2015. Her certificate of election reads: