Elected: 2020
Discipline: Physics and Astronomy
Professor Rosalind Allen
Professor of Biological Physics, University of Edinburgh
Rosalind Allen is a biological physicist who uses theoretical work and experiments to study how microbes – microscopic, single-celled living organisms – survive and grow in changing environments. Her research aims to understand how individuals organise themselves into complex ecosystems. She has worked at the School of Physics and Astronomy at Edinburgh University since 2006, initially as a Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Fellow and since 2009 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow. Rosalind obtained her first degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1999, followed by a Masters in Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. During her PhD, she studied water permeation of nanopores using computer simulations with Jean-Pierre Hansen at Cambridge University. From 2003-2006, Rosalind was a Marie Curie Research Fellow in the group of Pieter Rein ten Wolde at AMOLF in Amsterdam, where she developed new methods for simulating rare events, including genetic switch flipping. From 2006-2011, Rosalind has led the StoMP research network, a UK-wide interdisciplinary group of microbiologists and physical scientists.