Professor Dame Athene Donald

Organisation

University of Cambridge

Job title

Professor of Experimental Physics

Biography

Professor Athene Donald is Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge and Master of Churchill College; she has spent most of her life at Cambridge including studying there for her first and second degrees. Her area of research is soft condensed matter, particularly at the interface with biology. She has been awarded numerous prizes for her research from various bodies, and won the 2009 L'Oreal/UNESCO For Women in Science Laureate for Europe. From 2010-14 she was the University's Gender Equality Champion and Director of the Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative. She also chaired the Athena Forum from 2009-13 and served on the Royal Society's Equality and Diversity Advisory Network. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999 and was appointed a DBE in 2010. She currently sits on Royal Society Council, the Scientific Council of the European Research Council and is a Trustee of the Science Museum Group. She frequently writes about gender issues both on her personal blog

(http://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/) and on the Guardian Science blogs, where she also discusses issues regarding research careers and support for young researchers.