Dr Claire Pike

Claire is Deputy Dean (Education) for the Faculty of Science and Engineering at ARU. In this role, she oversees curriculum development, academic quality, student achievement, and the student experience across a wide range of STEM courses and disciplines. She is passionate about the power of education to positively transform people's lives.

claire.pike@aru.ac.uk

Background

Claire read Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, progressing to the MSc in Biochemistry and then a PhD in the field of epigenetics and transcriptional control at the Gurdon Institute. She completed a postdoctoral Research Associateship at the Hutchison/MRC Research Centre, focussing on the genetics and genomics of breast cancer, and joined Anglia Ruskin University in 2013.

Alongside her educational leadership and research work, Claire has taught for 15 years at the University of Cambridge, supervising undergraduates in the Biological Natural Sciences Tripos, directing final-year project students in the Department of Pathology, and acting as a Director of Studies for Magdalene College.

She has lectured on a broad range of biomedical sciences topics in London and at ARU, supervises PhD students in cognate disciplines, and has played a key part in writing new degree courses, which were successful accredited. Claire is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a member of the Executive Committee of the Heads of University Sciences of Biomedical Sciences, and a member of the Curriculum Committee and the Education Policy Advisory Group of the Royal Society of Biology.

Research interests

• Epigenetic regulation of gene expression
• Genes that are found to be recurrently targeted by structural change to chromosomes
• Signalling factors that maintain integrity of the mammary epithelium, and the effects of their dysregulation
• Breast cancer genetics – toward finding ‘drivers’ of tumourigenesis in genetically dissimilar cases
• Molecular mechanisms of chemotherapeutic drug resistance

Areas of research supervision

• Breast cancer genetics
• Chemotherapeutic drug resistance
• Pedagogy and educational research

Teaching

BSc (Hons) Biomedical Science

MSc Applied Bioscience

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Cambridge
• MSci Biochemistry, University of Cambridge
• MA Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge

Memberships, editorial boards

• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Executive Committee Member of Heads of University Centres of Biomedical Sciences
• Member of the Education Policy Advisory Group of the Royal Society of Biology
• Member of the Curriculum Committee of the Royal Society of Biology