Known for Biological Physics Institution University of Edinburgh | Alma mater University of Melbourne | |
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Institutions University of Edinburgh | ||
Catherine Elizabeth MacPhee CBE FRSE FInstP FRSC FRSB, known as Cait MacPhee, is Professor of Biological Physics at the University of Edinburgh. After studying for her BSc in biochemistry and her PhD in medicine at the University of Melbourne she moved to the University of Oxford for postdoctoral research, where she was a research fellow at St Hilda's College, and subsequently held a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship. From 2001-2005 she was a Royal Society University Fellow in the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge and held a research fellowship at Girton College and then a fellowship at King's College. In 2006 she moved to the University of Edinburgh, where she became Professor of Biological Physics in 2011.
MacPhee's research into the Bs1a protein from Bacillus subtilis, together with Nicola Stanley-Wall from the University of Dundee, has been widely reported because of potential applications in the production of ice cream. She was appointed CBE in the 2016 New Year Honours "for services to women in physics", and was subsequently elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2016 she was selected as a finalist for the BBSRC Innovator of the Year competition.