Akane Kawamura PhD, DPhil

Akane Kawamura is a Professor of Chemical Biology. After obtaining M.Chem and D.Phil degrees at the University of Oxford, she spent three years in the biotech sector where she led a number of drug discovery projects across a wide range of therapeutic areas. In 2009 she returned to academia as a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Chris Schofield FRS at the University of Oxford and in 2012 established her group in the Department of Chemistry and Radcliffe Department of Medicine as a BHF CRE Senior Research Fellow.

Akane Kawamura was subsequently awarded a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship (2013-2018) ERC Starting (2016-2021) and Consolidator (2021-) grants. In 2019, she became a Chair and Professor of Chemical Biology at Newcastle University and currently holds a joint appointment, with research activities at both universities. Akane is a Director of Oxford-GSK-Crick Chemical Biology CDT (2018-) and a co-director of the Chemistry in Cells PhD Programme (2019-). Her group’s research focuses on understanding the chemistry of epigenetic regulation, protein-protein interactions, and the development of chemical probes and (cyclic) peptide-based target validation approaches.