Rate My Professor Michelle Peckham

Professor Michelle Peckham is Professor of Cell Biology in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds. She graduated with a BA in Biology (Physiology of Organisms) from the University of York in 1981 and obtained her PhD from University College London in 1984, researching the energetics of muscle contraction under Professor Roger Woledge. Following her doctorate, she conducted postdoctoral research at King's College London (1985-1987) with Professor Malcolm Irving, at UCSF (1987-1988), and at the University of York (1988-1990). In 1990, she was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at King's College London, where she established her own laboratory focusing on the cytoskeleton using molecular biology and cell culture techniques. In 1997, she moved to the University of Leeds as a Lecturer, advancing through Senior Lecturer, Reader, to full Professor in 2010.

As a Wellcome Trust Investigator, Professor Peckham's research centers on the regulation and function of motor proteins, particularly myosins and the cytoskeleton, employing advanced techniques such as super-resolution microscopy (PALM/STORM, iSIM, STED), Cryo-EM, and Affimer technology. Her laboratory investigates how mutations in cytoskeletal proteins lead to diseases including muscle disorders, cardiomyopathies, bleeding disorders, cancer, and sensory impairments. Notable achievements include determining the Cryo-EM structure of the shutdown state of smooth muscle myosin (Scarff et al., Nature, 2020), developing Affimers for super-resolution imaging of tubulin and other proteins (Tiede et al., eLife, 2017; Lopata et al., Scientific Reports, 2018), and elucidating effects of disease mutations in myosins using cultured human muscle cells (Parker et al., Journal of Molecular Biology, 2018). She has published extensively, with key works on Z-disk organization (Parker et al., Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, 2023) and Affimer applications (Cordell et al., Journal of Cell Science, 2022). Professor Peckham has trained over 40 postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers and has held leadership roles such as President of the Royal Microscopical Society (2016-2019) and current Executive Honorary Secretary. She is a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society and the Royal Society for Biology, and a member of the British Society for Molecular Biology.