Professor Lorna Casselton

Lorna Casselton was Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society from 2006-2011. She is also Emeritus Professor of Fungal Genetics in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford.

Professor Casselton researches sexual development in fungi, and is distinguished for her genetic and molecular analysis of the mushroom Coprinus cinereus.

She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999 and became Foreign Secretary and Vice-President in 2006.

Professor Casselton began her career in lecturing and research as an assistant lecturer at Royal Holloway College, London. She became Professor of Genetics at Queen Mary College, London and was later awarded an AFRC/BBSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, followed by a BBSRC Senior Research Fellowship in 1995.

Professor Casselton was a Fellow of St Cross College Oxford from 1993-2003, and was appointed Professor of Fungal Genetics at Oxford in 1997. She was a member of the Royal Society's Council from 2002-2003, and rejoined the council in 2006.

As Foreign Secretary, Professor Casselton's duties include overseeing the Society's international relations programme, in particular its contact with other scientific academies, and its allocation of funding to both international researchers and UK researchers wanting to study abroad.