Adele Marston is appointed Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at the University of Oxford

We are delighted to announce that Adele Marston has been appointed Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at the University of Oxford. Adele will take up her post on 1 August 2027 and will visit the Department of Biochemistry in November to start making plans for the move.

Adele completed her DPhil here in Oxford in the lab of Jeff Errington and subsequently went on to work with John Chant at Harvard University and Angelika Amon at MIT. She established her research group at the University of Edinburgh in 2005 and was appointed Professor of Cell Biology in 2015. She is Director of the Wellcome Discovery Research Platform for Hidden Cell Biology, established in 2023, and has been Director of the Centre for Cell Biology (formerly a Wellcome Centre) since 2021. She is also co-Director of the Wellcome PhD programme in Integrated Cell Mechanisms. Adele is an EMBO member (2019), Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2022) and recipient of the Genetics Society Mary Lyon Medal (2024).

Adele’s group works on chromosome segregation in mitosis and meiosis and aims to discover fundamental molecular mechanisms that direct chromosome structure and segregation during mitosis and meiosis. The goal is to understand how errors in human oocyte meiosis and the first mitotic divisions of the human embryo arise and contribute to infertility. 

Adele says: “I am delighted to be joining the Department of Biochemistry and excited by the opportunities to build connections across Oxford. This is an ideal setting to develop the next phase of my research on the fundamental mechanisms of chromosome segregation and their links to infertility and reproductive disorders. Having completed my scientific education here, I know what a stimulating intellectual environment Oxford is, and I am especially pleased to be returning.”

Francis Barr, Head of the Department of Biochemistry at Oxford