Exeter Fellow receives Lifetime Achievement Award
Exeter College Fellow Professor Dame Carol Robinson, Royal Society Research Professor and Dr Lee’s Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s European Inventor Award 2024.
The European Patent Office (EPO) started the European Inventor Award in 2006 to celebrate the individual contributions of inventors and to encourage innovation continually. With a jury made up of previous finalists, there is a lot of competition for these awards and the Lifetime Achievement Award is given out to those people who have made a significant impact on their field of study. The ceremony, which took place in July, saw the Lifetime Achievement Award given to Professor Robinson for her ground-breaking work in mass spectrometry.
Professor Robinson has developed new techniques to improve the study of proteins, providing insights into their complex structures. As a co-founder of OMass Therapeutics, she has been able to further utilise her mass spectrometry innovations to develop drugs to help target membrane proteins and protein complexes which are implicated in disease, such as the MC2 receptor in congenital adrenal hyperplasia.
Along with her innovative research, Professor Robinson also mentors several postgraduate students and early-career scientists, nurturing the next generation of scientists.
Having left school at 16 and later taking a break from academia for eight years to raise her three children, Professor Robinson became the first full female Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and then with the University of Oxford, becoming a role model for women and girls interested in working in STEM disciplines. She has received many awards, including the Novozymes Prize in 2019 and a Royal Society Medal in 2010. In 2013, Professor Robinson was recognised in the New Year Honours list and made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to science and industry. She currently holds the University Chair of Dr Lee’s Professor of Chemistry and is the first Director of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery at Oxford.
Exeter College congratulates Professor Dame Carol Robinson on this exceptional achievement, which not only celebrates her scientific achievements but also her significant impact on the scientific community and society.
