29 Jun 2009
Claire was born in Warrington, Cheshire, where she grew up and attended Birchwood Community High School and Priestley Sixth Form College. Here, she excelled in both science and languages, gaining the Languages Prize, awarded for commitment and dedication to the languages section between 1995-2000, and the Priestley College prize for Science and Mathematics. From a very young age Claire has always found science, in particular chemistry, extremely exciting. In 2002, she was granted a place to read chemistry at Grey College, Durham University.
Claire studied for four years in Durham, graduating with a first class Honours degree (MChem). Here she received the Michael Weston Scholarship Award, awarded by Grey College for demonstrating a 1st Class performance in Level 2 examinations, and successfully published a scientific paper in Chemical Communications (Chem. Commun., 2006, 3199-3201) detailing the research that she conducted with Prof. Jonathan W. Steed during her fourth year.
In 2006, she was granted an EPSRC/GSK studentship and moved to London to study for an MRes/PhD at Imperial College in Chemical Biology. Here she gained a distinction for her Master of Research degree in Protein and Membrane Chemical Biology, and was awarded the Sir Alan Fersht Prize for producing the best overall thesis. She is now conducting her doctoral studies on drug-membrane interactions under the supervision of Dr Oscar Ces, Prof. Andrew deMello and Prof. Antony Gee.
Claire has always had a love for dance and music from a young age. She learned to play both the piano and violin during her school years and studied ballet at Kate Simmons' Dance school, taking major Cecchetti examinations and dancing in both lower and upper school performances at venues such as the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. Her passion for ballet has continued throughout her university years and at Imperial, where she voluntarily teaches dance to young children and adults. She currently has a strong involvement with one of Imperial’s largest clubs, ICU Dance Company, having been elected Ballet Director '07/'08, and President for '08/'09.
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