Richard Henderson is a Scottish molecular biologist and Nobel Laureate who has fundamentally advanced structural biology through his pioneering work in electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM). Beginning at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), he and colleague Nigel Unwin developed electron microscopy into a method capable of determining protein structures, notably applying it to the light-driven proton pump bacteriorhodopsin.

Over the following decades, Henderson played a central role in refining cryo-EM techniques, overcoming critical technical challenges to transform the method into a high-resolution tool capable of visualising biomolecules at near-atomic resolution. For this work, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank. His contributions have revolutionised structural biology and enabled a new era of molecular visualisation crucial for understanding biology and disease.

Dame Carol Robinson is the Dr Lee’s Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Oxford and the founding Director of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery. She is internationally recognised for pioneering the application of mass spectrometry to study the structure and dynamics of intact protein complexes.

Her development of native mass spectrometry has enabled unprecedented insights into how proteins interact with drugs and other biomolecules, transforming approaches in structural biology and pharmaceutical research. A Fellow of the Royal Society and recipient of numerous honours including the Royal Medal and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), Robinson’s work bridges chemistry, biology, and technology, and has profoundly shaped the field of protein science.

Professor Ed Tate is an internationally recognised chemical biologist whose research focuses on developing innovative chemical tools to investigate protein function, interactions, and post-translational modifications in living systems. His work has been particularly influential in understanding protein lipidation and its roles in health and disease.

Tate has pioneered transformative approaches for drug target validation and medicinal chemistry, including advances in chemical proteomics and the development of novel therapeutic strategies against parasitic diseases such as malaria. His laboratory has developed highly impactful chemical biology technologies for visualising and analysing protein modifications in cells, significantly contributing to drug discovery and translational science.

Professor Kathryn Lilley is an expert in proteomics whose pioneering work has transformed our understanding of protein and RNA localisation within cells. As Director of the Cambridge Centre for Proteomics, she has developed innovative methodologies such as LOPIT (Localisation of Organelle Proteins by Isotope Tagging) that interrogate the spatial dynamics of the transcriptome and proteome at subcellular resolution

Lilley's interdisciplinary approach bridges proteomics, transcriptomics, and computational biology. Such powerful methods are now increasingly being applied to dissect cellular mechanisms related to pathologies and their treatment, uncovering new regulators of disease progression.

Professor Madhavi Krishnan is a physical chemist whose research explores the fundamental physics of molecules in confined environments, with a focus on single-molecule manipulation and the physical basis of molecular interactions. She is Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Oxford, where her group develops novel techniques for analysing the size, charge, and shape of individual biomolecules.

Krishnan is best known for inventing the 'electrostatic fluidic trap' – a powerful method for confining and studying single molecules in solution – which has opened new possibilities for understanding molecular behaviour in physiologically relevant conditions. Her interdisciplinary approach, bridging physics, chemistry, and biology, is enabling new insights into molecular recognition, charge, and shape, with wide-ranging implications for biophysics, diagnostics, and nanoscale biotechnology.

Stathis Megas is a computational biologist and machine learning researcher whose work focuses on developing mathematically-grounded models to uncover the principles of gene regulation and cellular communication in complex tissues. He is particularly interested in the design of interpretable deep learning algorithms for disentangled representations and causal inference in single-cell and spatial genomics.

He joined the Teichmann lab at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in 2023 as a postdoctoral fellow and became part of the Accelerate Science team at the University of Cambridge in 2024. His recent work centres on building causal GenAI and foundation models capable of reasoning over biological data using counterfactuals, providing new insights into intercellular signalling and the spatial organisation of gene expression. His models aim to bridge theoretical elegance with biological relevance, advancing mechanistic understanding and translational potential in fields ranging from cancer biology to immune signalling.