Professor Kathy Niakan
Professor of Reproductive Physiology and Director of the Centre for Trophoblast Research
Affiliations: Centre for Trophoblast Research
Kathy Niakan is Mary Marshall and Arthur Walton Professor of the Physiology of Reproduction and Director of the Centre for Trophoblast Research at the University of Cambridge from 2020. She is Chair of Cambridge Reproduction, an interdisciplinary strategic research initiative. From 2021, she has been an Honorary Group Leader at the Babraham Institute and Affiliate Member of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. She is a Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute, formerly the National Institute for Medical Research, since 2013. Prior to this she was a Centre for Trophoblast Research Next Generation Research Fellow in Cambridge. She obtained a B.Sc. in Cell and Molecular Biology and a B.A. in English Literature from University of Washington. She obtained her PhD at University of California, Los Angeles. She undertook postdoctoral training at Harvard University. Her laboratory pioneered approaches to investigate the function of genes that regulate early human development and the molecular mechanisms that direct cell fate in human embryos.