Professor Anna Philpott is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Resources and Operations. She is a Fellow of Clare College.
Professor Anna Philpott is a developmental biologist. She has a long-standing interest in how cells within developing embryos decide which fate to adopt. She is also interested in how they decide whether to proliferate or arrest cell division and adopt a mature functional state. She seeks to understand how control of these processes is subverted in cancer cells.
Professor Philpott undertook her first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge. She followed this with a PhD in chromatin biology, also at the University of Cambridge. She then undertook two postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School in Boston. In 1998, Anna moved back to Cambridge to start her own lab in the Department of Oncology.
Her laboratory is in the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. Her laboratory uses multiple experimental systems, in particular Xenopus frog eggs and embryos, to understand fundamental mechanisms controlling cell fate and differentiation during embryogenesis. They are exploring how these mechanisms get subverted to drive the aberrant behaviour of cancer cells. She was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 2020 and the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2022.
Professor Philpott will provide leadership across four areas. As Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Resources and Operations, she will lead on:
- prioritisation, distribution and use of resources across the University to optimise operational effectiveness
- integration of academic planning with resource planning
- oversight of the University’s change programmes
- oversight of the University’s IT and digital capability
Professor Philpott's early priority will be delivering changes in systems and processes in significant operational areas. These areas include finances, human resources and the University estate. The Pro-Vice-Chancellor will work to best position Cambridge to meet its academic needs moving forward.
