For the third year in a row, Fran Balkwill, Irene Leigh and Claudia Langenberg remain in the list of the UK’s top 100 female scientists.
Professor Frances Balkwill, Professor Irene Leigh, and Professor Claudia Langenberg have been named in Research.com’s third annual list of the country’s top 100 female scientists. Professor Langenberg is featured in the top 10.
The researchers have been featured on the list every year since its creation in 2022. The aim of the ranking is to “inspire female scholars, women pondering an academic career, as well as decision-makers worldwide with the example of successful women in the scientific community.”
Speaking as a group, Professor Langenberg, Professor Balkwill and Professor Leigh said: “It is humbling to see our names among so many wonderful and inspiring colleagues. Our ambition is to support the next generation of outstanding female scientists to diversify our talent pool at Queen Mary and beyond. The time is now!”
Queen Mary’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry is one of seven Faculties in the UK to hold the Athena Swan Gold Award, recognising our significant and sustained progression and achievements in gender equality in medicine. The Athena Swan Charter is an international framework used to support and transform gender equality within higher education and research, and the Gold Award is the highest award on offer.
Frances Balkwill, Professor of Cancer Biology at Barts Cancer Institute
Fran is Professor of Cancer Biology and Deputy Centre Lead for the Centre for Tumour Microenvironment at Queen Mary’s Barts Cancer Institute. She studies the tumour microenvironment, the dynamic mix of malignant and immune cells, blood vessels and other ostensibly normal cells found in most cancers. She is a pioneer of research into cancer-related inflammation and the tumour microenvironment and has made paradigm-shifting discoveries on the role of cytokines in cancer promotion that led to clinical trials. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 2024.
Fran is also a leader in public engagement in science. In her early career, when her children asked what she did for a living, she went to look for children’s books about cells that she could read to her children. She couldn’t find any, so wrote them herself. She has now written twelve and edited a further six children’s science books with graphic designer Mic Rolph. Approximately 500,000 books have been printed with ten foreign editions. She received the 2006 Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize, an annual award that recognises a scientist or engineer whose expertise in communicating scientific ideas in lay terms is exemplary.
She is Director of the Centre of the Cell, a biomedical science centre for children, educational website, and widening participation and outreach project in Whitechapel. It is the first science education centre in the world to be located within working biomedical research laboratories. The Centre has had over 250,000 visitors since its opening in 2009.
Claudia Langenberg, Director of the Precision Health University Research Institute (PHURI)
Claudia is a German-British scientist and the Director of the Precision Health University Research Institute (PUHRI), a cross-faculty institute that works closely with Barts Health NHS Trust to research and develop innovations in precision healthcare. She was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in July 2024.
A public health clinician by training, her research is focused on the genetic basis of metabolic control, and her team studies its effects on health through integration of detailed molecular with large-scale clinical data.
Before joining Queen Mary in September 2022, Claudia was Professor of Computational Medicine at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité University Medicine, Germany, where she continuous to hold a part-time role and team, and MRC Investigator and Programme Leader at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Irene Leigh, Professor of Cell and Molecular Medicine at the Institute of Dentistry
Irene’s research has focused on non-melanoma skin cancers and genetic skin diseases. Early in her career, she established the Centre for Cutaneous Research at the London Hospital Medical College, which later became part of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. The Centre became a world leader in skin biology research.
Irene directed the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) skin tumour laboratory from 1989-2017. She returned to Queen Mary in 2018 as the Interim Dean for Dentistry and then served as International Dean until 2021 when she served as Interim VP Health.
Irene’s research focuses on cutaneous squamous cell carcinogenesis particularly genomic and transcriptomic analysis. This has extended to other squamous cancers in a Centre of Excellence for Squamous Cancer being established within the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.
Irene is a Fellow of the Academy Medical Science and Fellow of Royal Society Edinburgh. In 2006, she was honoured with an OBE for services to medicine and then a CBE in 2012.
The Big Question
Join the Big Question lecture on 24 September where Professor Balkwill will be asking: ‘Will there ever be a cure for cancer?’
Find out more and book your tickets on the Queen Mary website.
For media information, contact: