Melanie Welham

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Melanie Welham
Professor Melanie Welham - BBSRC Chief Executive.jpg
Welham as BBSRC Chief Executive in 2018
Born
Melanie Joanne Welham

1964 (age 5960)
Alma mater Imperial College London
University College London
Scientific career
Institutions University of British Columbia
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
University of Bath
Thesis Functional and genetic analyses of the V-"src" oncogene  (1988)

DameMelanie Joanne Welham DBE (born 1964) is a British biochemist who was Executive Chair of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council from April 2018 to June 2023. She was previously a professor of biochemistry at the University of Bath, where she worked on stem cell biology.

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Early life and education

Welham was born and raised in Suffolk. Her father worked in agriculture, and she was the first member of her family to attend university. She studied biochemistry at Imperial College London, where only 15% of undergraduate students were women. [1] She moved to University College London for doctoral research, where she studied the oncogene. [2] She then moved to the University of British Columbia, where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher between 1989 and 1995. [1]

Research and career

Welham joined the University of Bath as a lecturer in 1995, where she worked on molecular signalling and stem cell science. She was the first woman to be promoted to Professor at Bath. [3]

Welham joined Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) on secondment in 2012. [4] In 2018 Welham was made Executive Chair of BBSRC, two years prior to this, she served as Interim Chief Executive of the Council. [4] [5]

She served as Executive Champion for People, Culture and Talent at UK Research and Innovation. [4] [6] She was made a trustee of the Royal Society of Biology and the University of Bristol in 2023. [7]

She was appointed a DBE for services to the biosciences in the 2023 Birthday Honours.

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, is a non-departmental public body (NDPB), and is the largest UK public funder of non-medical bioscience. It predominantly funds scientific research institutes and university research departments in the UK.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a British Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical sciences, mainly to universities in the United Kingdom. EPSRC research areas include mathematics, physics, chemistry, artificial intelligence and computer science, but exclude particle physics, nuclear physics, space science and astronomy. Since 2018 it has been part of UK Research and Innovation, which is funded through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

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References