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Soft matter physicist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rosalind Jane Allen is a soft matter physicist and Professor of Theoretical Microbial Ecology at the Biological Physics at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany, and (part-time) Professor of Biological Physics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland[1] She is a member of the centre for synthetic biology and systems biology where her research investigates the organisation of microbe populations.
Rosalind Allen | |
---|---|
Born | Rosalind Jane Allen |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA, MSci, PhD) University of Pennsylvania (MS) |
Awards | Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2009) Meldola Medal and Prize (2005) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biophysics |
Institutions | University of Edinburgh AMOLF |
Thesis | Electrostatic interactions in confined geometries (2003) |
Doctoral advisor | Jean-Pierre Hansen |
Website | www2 |
Allen studied the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Master of Science (MSci) degrees in 1999.[2][3] She was an undergraduate student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She moved to America for further postgraduate study, earning another master's degree (MS) in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.[2] She returned to Cambridge for her doctoral studies, earning a PhD in 2003[4] for research supervised by Jean-Pierre Hansen[2] on theoretical chemistry and computational simulations of water permeation of nanopores.[2][5][6]
Allen joined AMOLF as a Marie Curie Fellow, working on models of switching events between metastable states, which are rare.[7][8] She was part of the group who developed Forward Flux Sampling,[9] which simulates rare equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems and allows the calculation of rate constants.[7][10]
She joined the University of Edinburgh as a Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Research Fellow in 2006.[2] Allen is interested in organisms such as bacteria grow in complicated environments.[11] She was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2009, studying the non-equilibrium interactions of microbes with their environments.[12] She joined the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Young Academy of Scotland in 2012 and was promoted to Reader in 2013.[2]
She has studied how microbes are involved with the sulphur cycle, which releases significant amounts of carbon as microbes consume hydrogen from organic matter.[12] She analyses microbial ecology and nutrient cycles using Winogradsky columns, developing models that predict long-term microbial dynamics and chemical composition.[13] She studies how microbial populations develop on different surfaces, identifying what factors influence the structure.[12] Bacterial colonies self-assemble on soft gel surfaces, and Allen has modelled how they compete for space.[14] Allen uses algorithms to study the metabolic pathways of sugars.[15] She delivered the 2017 SCI: where science meets business Sir Eric Rideal Lecture.[16] Her work has been supported by the United States Army Research Laboratory.[17]
Allen delivered her inaugural lecture in 2018, discussing how physicists can contribute to antimicrobial resistance.[18][11] Her research into antimicrobial resistance considers how antibiotic drugs interact with the physiology of a cell.[19] She has also looked at how microbes evolve in drug gradients; finding that drug resistance is accelerated by the presence of a gradient.[20] This occurs because bacteria enter the gradient in waves, with each more resistant than the one that proceeded it.[20] Resistant mutant bacteria at the edges of the population wave exist at low density and do not compete with nearby cells.[20] Allen published a statistical physics guide to bacterial growth in 2018.[21]
In 2005 Allen was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Meldola Medal and Prize.[22] She was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) in 2009.[23][12]
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