By 
Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy & Biomedical Science
University of Strathclyde
katherine.duncan@strath.ac.uk
2017 Cruciblist
Katherine is a Chancellor’s Research Fellow and Lecturer in Drug Discovery. She discovers novel antibiotics and anticancer compounds from the oceans. She has over 12 years’ experience in marine natural products research, spanning 3 countries.
Katherine’s multi-disciplinary research knowledge within the area of drug discovery encompasses biotechnology, metabolomics, microbiology, next generation sequencing, anticancer and antimicrobial bioactivities, whole genome sequencing, genome mining for biosynthetic gene clusters, molecular biology, natural products chemistry and bioinformatics, providing a powerful strategy for high-throughput and innovative drug discovery. Katherine is committed to advancing her research through innovation, interaction and novel idea creation.
Her research is multidisciplinary, spanning science, technology, medicine and social science, involving both academia and industry.
Katherine has a RSC MChem (Scotland), an international Masters placement in Chemistry (Florida), a PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Canada), two postdoctoral fellowships in Marine Biomedicine (Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California) and Marine Biotechnology (Scottish Association for Marine Science). As a Chancellor’s Fellow, Katherine aims to develop a wider societal context for her research, thus, she would like to increase her understanding of wider public engagement to raise awareness of critical global issues E.g. antimicrobial resistant infections and the urgent need for new medicines.
Katherine is able to bring 7 years of international interdisciplinary research experience and global collaborations. She has a multi-national public engagement profile, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM and public dissemination of research. Katherine wants to work in interdisciplinary collaborations to benefit society.