Prof. Tuomas Knowles

Professor Knowles is Head of Kinetics for Wren Therapeutics. He is a Professor of Physical Chemistry and Biophysics in the Department of Chemistry and at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Professor Knowles is co-director of the Cambridge Centre for Protein Misfolding Diseases at the University of Cambridge.

Professor Knowles has received several distinguished awards for his work including the Harrison Meldola Memorial Prize (2012) and the Corday-Morgan Prize (2017) awarded by The Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics (2017).

Professor Knowles research focuses on applying physical approaches to study the self-assembly of protein molecules in the context of both biological function and malfunction.  His groundbreaking work on the chemical kinetics of protein misfolding and self-assembly, in particular, has transformed our understanding of the pathways that generate the aberrant forms of misfolded proteins believed to be the primary cause of disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Professor Knowles studied Biology at the University of Geneva, and Physics at ETH Zurich. He moved to Cambridge in 2004 to work towards his PhD in the Cavendish Laboratory and the Nanoscience Centre. In 2008 Professor Knowles was elected to a Research Fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge, and was then appointed successively to a University Lectureship, Readership and Professorship. Since 2016, he holds Professorships in both the Department of Chemistry and the Cavendish Laboratory (Department of Physics).

Professor Knowles has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles.