Professor Helen Cooper

Proteins are the workhorses of the cell, performing all the functions necessary for life. They are large molecules associated with a vast array of chemical modifications, and which form loosely-bound complexes with themselves, other proteins and other types of molecules. It is not only their chemical structure but also their overall 3D structure which dictates their function. To truly understand the various and specific roles of proteins in life processes, we need to be able to analyse protein structure at the molecular level directly from the physiological environment, e.g. in tissue. Professor Cooper and her team are developing new tools and approaches, collectively termed native ambient mass spectrometry, to address that challenge. In developing these tools, they are providing new routes to understand disease processes and aid drug discovery.

Biography

Helen J Cooper FRSC is Professor of Mass Spectrometry and EPSRC Established Career Fellow in the school of biosciences at the University of Birmingham. She obtained her BSc and PhD in chemistry at the University of Warwick before becoming Experimental Officer in Fourier transform mass spectrometry. She moved to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University in 2000, where she continued her research in Fourier transform mass spectrometry. She returned to the UK in 2003 to establish an independent career at the University of Birmingham. She was awarded a Wellcome Trust University Technology Fellowship in 2004 and an EPSRC Established Career Fellowship in 2014. Helen’s research focuses on in situ analysis of proteins by mass spectrometry. She has published over 140 papers in peer-reviewed journals and contributed invited reviews to Trends in Analytical Chemistry and Mass Spectrometry Reviews. She has attracted funding from UKRI, charities and industry. Her industrial partners include global leaders in pharma and analytical instrumentation. She is a Director and Trustee of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry and Analysis & Sensing. She was Trustee and elected committee member of the British Mass Spectrometry Society (2007–2015), and Chair of the Management Advisory Panel for the EPSRC National Mass Spectrometry Facility (to 2018).

It was all the colours involved that first generated my interest in chemistry. By the time I went on to learn about the spectroscopy of flames, I was hooked.

Professor Helen Cooper