Student showcase

Jane Allison

Jane Allison first came into contact with the Royal Society when she was in Year 13 when she spent a month in Singapore working at the National University as part of an international summer science school. She had an amazing time there, meeting people from all around Asia, and having a chance to do some “real” laboratory work investigating brain development in zebrafish. After graduating from Cashmere High School as co-Dux in 2000 she gained direct entry into second year biochemistry at the University of Canterbury, where she completed a BSc Hons (1st class) in three years. During this time she did two summer research projects working on protein quaternary structure with Professor Juliet Gerrard. At the end of 2003 she was awarded one of three inaugural Woolf Fisher scholarships to study towards a PhD at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Before taking this up in October 2004 she did further research under Juliet Gerrard. Jane also worked with Ashley Sparrow developing a computer program to simulate the evolutionary effects of fire in the high country.

Her PhD work at Cambridge is supervised by Professor Chris Dobson, a leading expert in protein folding and mis-folding. She works most closely with Michele Vendruscolo, many postdocs and other PhD students. The aim of her group is to characterise all the structural states accessible to a protein. Jane’s role in this project is to develop simulation techniques for using experimental data as restraints to allow us to generate ensembles of structures representative of disordered protein states. This is proving to be more difficult than we expected, but has thrown up some interesting issues along the way.

Jane’s college, Trinity, is the largest and one of the oldest colleges. She loves the historical aspect of living in Cambridge, although the weather leaves a lot to be desired! Jane started rowing when she arrived, and now row in her college’s 1st Women’s VIII. They have been very successful recently, winning or coming second in almost all of the races last term. At the end of the Lent and May terms they have the famous ‘bumps’ races which are very fun – all the boats line up along the river, and at the start of the race, signalled by a cannon, they all start rowing furiously, the aim being to bump the boat in front before getting bumped yourself. She also plays football for college and for the university 2nd team. Unfortunately they lost their varsity match against Oxford for the last two years. In summer she plays cricket for the university women’s team, of which she is vice-captain, and also for the college graduate team and a local men’s team. Last year they were unfortunate to lose the cricket varsity match, which is played at Lords, although she  did score her maiden century there! Jane is also the sports representative on the college graduate society committee, which involves running the college gym as well as helping out with the various parties and events run by the society.

Jane has been able to travel a bit around England and in Europe (helped greatly by cut-price airfares!), including attending courses in Lyon and Amsterdam. She also presented some of her early results at the Protein Society Symposium in Boston, MA, last August. After completing her PhD she hopes to do post-doctoral research somewhere in Europe, but in the long-term she would love to return to New Zealand.