1 January 2025 – Dr Barbara Jennings New Committee Member

Barbara Jennings Ordinary Committee member Cell and Developmental Genetics

The Genetics Society is proud to welcome Dr Barbara Jennings as a member of the committee as a representative of Cell and Developmental Genetics beginning her four-year term in January 2025.

Biography

Barbara is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological and Medical Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. Barbara grew up in Australia, where she completed her undergraduate studies. She first joined the Genetics Society after moving to the UK to study as PhD student at the University of Cambridge, where she was using Drosophila as a model to investigate the role of HES transcription factors in the Notch signalling pathway. She continued to pursue her research interests in developmental genetics as a Post-Doc in the ICRF/CRUK Developmental Genetics Group, then as an independent Research Fellow at the UCL Cancer Institute (supported by an MRC Career Development Award) before moving to Oxford Brookes in 2014. She continues to explore the molecular mechanisms of transcription factor function during development. In parallel, she serves as the course coordinator for the Biomedical Science degree at Oxford Brookes. This programme attracts a diverse student body, including many from BAME backgrounds and those who are the first in their families to attend university. Her broad experience from varied academic settings will support the Genetics Society to encourage and enable people from diverse backgrounds to pursue careers and research in genetics.