Louise Serpell - Biography#

Beginning with a BSc. in Biochemistry and Genetics, Louise went on to lead an independent research group before the age of 30 at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and went on to become a Professor at University of Sussex at the age of 40. She is currently Director of Sussex Neuroscience, a virtual centre spanning four schools at Sussex (50 PIs). This was founded in 2013 to bring together a multidisciplinary group at the leading edge of neuroscience innovation and to run a new, four year doctoral programme. She has been selected to chair FASEB and Jacques Monod conferences, that lead the field of amyloidosis and has been been invited to speak at more than 30 international conferences over the last 10 years. She has served on grant panels including BBSRC, UKRI FLF, Alzheimer's society and Alzheimer's Research UK and she is an editorial board member at Journal of Molecular Biology, Frontiers in Mol. Biosciences, Biochemical Journal and Journal of Amyloid.

Her current research area focusses on the structural characteristics of amyloidogenic proteins related to the pathological effects in neurodegenerative and protein misfolding diseases. She has a strong expertise in structural biology of fibrous molecules which is illustrated by her work elucidating the first molecular structure of amyloid fibrils. Her work encompasses molecular biophysics, cell biology, neuroscience and high-resolution imaging. Alongside her active research programme, she organizes outreach and public engagement events for a broad range of interested public from school children to those adults with an interest in Dementia. She spent over ten years as an active member of University of Sussex equality, diversity and inclusion committees and was chair of the EDI committee for School of Life Sciences during the time it was awarded Bronze and Silver Athena SWAN awards (Athena SWAN is the Gender equality charter in the UK). During this time, she organised a Rosalind Franklin Women in Science symposium with international speakers, and the "Women in Science" seminar series for two years at Sussex University.

1989-1992: Biochemistry and Genetics single honours degree, University of Nottingham.
1992-1995: DPhil Thesis (1995) "Structural Studies of Amyloid Proteins" University of Oxford, Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics. Supervisor: Dr CCF Blake.

Current Income:

Current grant income = over £1M
Total grant income (PI) = over 5.5M

Publications:

Total number of peer-reviewed papers/articles 146, H-index (Google Scholar) 63; times cited 19265.
3 articles cited over 1000 times, 8 over 500 and 47 cited over 100 times.

Supervision:

14 PhD students supervised to completion
12 postdoctoral researchers supervised

International conferences:

Organiser of 8 international conferences. Elected chair of two conferences.
Invited speaker for more than 40 international conferences, 18 in last 5 year.

Grant panels and editorial boards:

7 grant panel review boards; current member of two
Editor for four international journals.