Jane Dyson


Helen Jane Dyson is a British-born biophysicist and a professor of integrative structural and computational biology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. She is also currently editor-in-chief of the Biophysical Journal.

Early life and career

Jane Dyson was born in England, and was raised near Sydney. Dyson received her bachelor's of science in biochemistry from the University of Sydney in 1973. She received her PhD in inorganic chemistry from the same institution in 1977. Dyson did a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Paul Schimmel in 1977. From 1979 to 1984, Dyson was a UNESCO Lecturer in the School of Chemistry at the University of New South Wales. In 1984, she joined the lab of Richard Lerner at the Scripps Research Institute. In 1992, Dyson became associate professor at the Department of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Research Institute. In 2001, she was promoted to professor.

Research

Jane Dyson applies a number of biophysical techniques including Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, circular dichroism, and fluorescence spectroscopy to study the relationships between the amino acid sequences of proteins and their structure and function. Dyson is well known for her work on intrinsically disordered proteins.

Awards

Dyson has received several awards for her research including the Roslyn Flora Goulston Prize for Biochemistry from the University of Sydney in 1971. The Postdoctoral Award from the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Fund in 1977. In 2009, she was awarded a D.Sc. from the Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney. In 2010, Dyson received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the San Diego Section of the American Chemical Society.

''Biophysical Journal''

Jane Dyson is the 15th editor-in-chief of the Biophysical Journal. She is the first woman editor of the journal.

Personal life

Dyson is married to scientist Peter Wright, who also studies intrinsically disordered proteins. They have two children.