Professor Dame Carol Robinson awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant

The European Research Council (ERC) has recently awarded Exeter College Fellow, Royal Society Research Professor and Dr Lee’s Professor of Chemistry Professor Dame Carol Robinson an ERC Advanced Grant. She has held the Dr Lee’s Chair in Chemistry since 2009 and was both Oxford’s and previously Cambridge’s first female Professor of Chemistry. 

The ERC Advanced Grant is the latest of Professor Robinson’s many international awards and recognitions, including the 2022 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry, the 2022 Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine, the European Chemistry Gold Medal from the European Chemistry Society (EuChemS), the Othmer Gold Medal from the Science History Institute, the Academy Prize from the Royal Academy of Belgium and the Royal Medal from the Royal Society.

The ERC Advanced Grant will support Professor Robinson’s investigation into how the mass spectrometry technology she has been developing over a number of years could be used in clinical applications. This will draw on Professor Robinson’s expertise in using mass spectrometry to provide unparalleled information on the structure, binding partners, and dynamics of proteins. In this new work, she will develop approaches to link the status of an intact protein receptor or transporter with its changing modifications and environment during disease progression. Ultimately, this could help reveal new targets for cancer treatment regimes.

Professor Robinson said: ‘I am delighted to receive this award. It will allow us to explore unchartered territory with approaches that I have spent my whole career developing. I am grateful to all of my team members – their ideas and willingness to push boundaries have allowed us to propose entirely new directions. I look forward to working with them, as well as our new collaborators at the Oxford Cancer Centre, to achieve our goals.’