Rate My Professor Kathryn Lilley

Professor Kathryn Lilley serves as Professor of Cellular Dynamics in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. She is the Director of the Cambridge Centre for Proteomics and a member of the Milner Therapeutics Institute. Additionally, she is a Fellow and Director of Studies in Natural Sciences (Biological Part II Biochemistry and Genetics, and Biological Part III Biochemistry and Systems Biology) at Jesus College. Lilley earned her BSc and PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Sheffield. She established the proteomics facility at Cambridge in 2000 and has been a professor since 2012.

Her research group develops and applies advanced proteomics technologies to quantify the dynamic proteome in space and time, investigating changes in protein abundance, subcellular localization, interactions, post-translational modifications, and structures during processes like cellular differentiation, stress responses, and drug treatments. Key areas include subcellular transcriptome mapping, dynamic ribonucleoprotein complexes, and correlations between proteome and transcriptome trafficking. Notable methodological contributions include localization of organelle proteins by isotope tagging (LOPIT), orthogonal organic phase separation (OOPS) for RNA-protein interactions, and spatial proteomics workflows. Highly cited publications include "A subcellular map of the human proteome" (2017), "DIA-NN: neural networks and interference correction enable deep proteome coverage in high throughput" (2020), and "Comprehensive identification of RNA-protein interactions in any organism using orthogonal organic phase separation (OOPS)" (2019). Lilley has received the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (2015), the European Proteomics Association (EuPA) Juan Pablo Albar Proteomics Pioneer Prize (2017), the Human Proteome Organisation (HUPO) Award for Distinguished Achievement in Proteomic Sciences (2018), and was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2020. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. Her innovative approaches, combining quantitative mass spectrometry, RNA sequencing, and computational modeling, have significantly influenced spatial proteomics and supported numerous collaborations in academia and industry.