Kathryn Lilley

Kathryn Lilley is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, where she has held academic positions since 2004. She is Director of the Cambridge Centre for Proteomics and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. She also serves as a Member of the Milner Therapeutics Institute and previously led the Mass Spectrometry theme at the Rosalind Franklin Institute.

Her research focuses on developing innovative technologies for spatial proteomics and transcriptomics, with particular emphasis on understanding the dynamic organization of proteins and RNA within cells. Her group creates robust open-source informatics pipelines that enable end-to-end analysis of proteomic data, making their methods widely accessible to the research community. Recent work has expanded into investigating the subcellular spatial transcriptome and its interactions with the proteome, generating significant interest in RNA biology.

Lilley's publications reveal a strong focus on advancing spatial proteomics methodologies, with recent work emphasizing computational approaches, neural networks for data analysis, and novel techniques for studying RNA-protein interactions. Her research bridges biochemistry, computational biology, and cell biology, with applications in understanding cellular perturbation responses and disease mechanisms.

• 2020 Elected as a member of EMBO
• 2018 Human Proteomics Organisation, Distinguished Achievement in Proteomic Sciences Award
• 2017 European Proteomics Association Juan Pablo Albar Proteomics Pioneer award
• 2012 Fellow of the Royal Society of Biologists

Lilley receives considerable funding from the Pharmaceutical Industry and collaborates widely both nationally and internationally. She heads a large research group that develops technologies for interrogating spatial distributions of the proteome and its reorganization upon cellular perturbation. Her work is highly regarded in the field, as evidenced by numerous plenary and keynote invitations at international conferences.