Jane Clarke is Professor of Molecular Biophysics in the Chemistry Department of the University of Cambridge. Her research is 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 Emeritus chemists, biochemists and physicists. She retired, finally, from active research in 2019.

Jane Clarke’s career is somewhat unusual.  After several years teaching science in comprehensive schools she started a PhD at the age of 40 with Professor Sir Alan Fersht in Cambridge. After 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 Cambridge University in 1997. 

In her role as Deputy Head of the Chemistry Department in Cambridge, Professor Clarke became involved in mentoring, career development and leadership training for scientists at all stages in their careers. She is particularly interested to support women to stay in science. As a mother and grandmother she knows that it is possible to combine family life with a successful career.

She is currently President of Wolfson College Cambridge.