Dr Claire Pike

Claire teaches at both undergraduate and postgraduate level on a broad range of cell biology, molecular genetics and biochemistry topics. As Deputy Head, she is responsible for Academic Quality of the Department’s provision.

claire.pike@anglia.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 research work, Claire has taught for 12 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 also lectured on a broad range of biomedical sciences topics in London and played a key part in writing new degree courses, which were successful accredited. Claire has been made a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy on the basis of her experience in teaching and learning.

At Anglia Ruskin, Claire is Deputy Head of Department with responsibility for Academic Quality, Staffing and Resources. She lectures on both the BSc (Hons) Biomedical Science and MSc Applied Bioscience degree courses – mainly in the fields of molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics – and also supervises PhD students in cognate disciplines.

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

Areas of research supervision

• Breast cancer genetics
• Chemotherapeutic drug resistance

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