Jane Clarke is Chair of the Royal Society Advisory Committee on Mathematical Education, Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biophysics in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and former President of Wolfson College.

Jane’s career is somewhat unusual. After several years teaching secondary school science in comprehensive schools, she started a PhD at the age of 40 with Professor Sir Alan Fersht in Cambridge. Following a postdoctoral fellowship in protein NMR spectroscopy at the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering in Cambridge, she won a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship and joined the Chemistry Department at the University of Cambridge in 1997.

Her research has always been multidisciplinary, combining single-molecule and ensemble biophysical techniques with protein engineering and simulations to investigate protein folding, misfolding and assembly. Her small research team included chemists, biochemists, physicists, and computer scientists drawn from across the globe. She retired from active research in 2017, when she joined Wolfson College as its sixth (and first scientist and first female) President.

As a mother and grandmother, Jane knows that it is possible to combine family life with a successful career. She has long been actively involved in mentoring, career development and leadership training for scientists at all stages in their careers. She is particularly committed to supporting women and other under-represented groups to enter and then remain working in science. “I know from my earliest years, encouraged by my science-teacher mother to be curious and confident, that great teaching is fundamental to success. We cannot underestimate the power of education to change lives, and the world, for the better.”

It is this experience and understanding that Jane brings to RS ACME. “Although I am not a mathematician, I have used mathematics and data science every day throughout my scientific career; I have seen how large data has transformed research in biomedicine and other areas of scientific endeavour. Unusually for a Fellow of the Royal Society, I also taught maths for a number of years in comprehensive schools (a very significant proportion of maths lessons are taught by non- specialists). Thus, I truly appreciate the importance of offering all our children a mathematical and data education that will prepare them for their futures.”