Carol Robinson grew up in Kent, England attending a local school where, in addition to her academic subjects, she learned practical subjects such as typing, needlework and cookery. Leaving school at 16, she took up a position as a Gas Liquid Chromatographer at Pfizer, where she discovered her love of mass spectrometry. “Although, the 16-year old Carol thought this job title was really good, I didn’t find the work interesting”, she shares. “My role as a technician, however, involved rotations around all the laboratories and it was when I reached the mass spectrometry laboratory that I felt most at home. I really took to it and made it my career.”
Working by day on the mass spectrometer, she studied before and after work, completing her undergraduate degree in seven years. In 1980, she was accepted by the University of Cambridge to continue her studies in mass spectrometry and to embark upon her doctorate. She had, by this time, left her post at Pfizer and was able to apply herself full-time to her studies, completing her PhD in just two years. Her unconventional path to PhD was to set the trend for her the rest of her career.
Early in her time as a postdoc, Robinson made the decision to step away from her career in order to spend time at home with her three young children. During this time she took on a variety of part-time teaching posts that worked with her family’s schedule, before a chance advertisement she encountered at her local library set her back on the path to academia.
The Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford was advertising for a postdoctoral researcher in mass spectrometry; despite her eight years away from the field, Robinson decided to apply, recognizing that her knowledge wouldn’t be as up to date as candidates who were actively engaged in research. Luckily, someone on the hiring committee remembered Robinson from her time at Cambridge and decided to take a chance on her, and so in early 1992, she re-entered academia as a postdoctoral researcher in the mass spectrometry laboratory at the University of Oxford.
This period represented the most challenging in Robinson’s career. She had to learn new skills to keep up with current technology, as well as catch up with advances in her field. “It was a whole new era,” she explains. “From the peptides that I had worked with in my PhD, the field had moved on to whole proteins and nucleic acids — I had a lot of reading to do. As well as getting ‘up-to-speed’ with research in the field, I also had to upgrade my IT and presentation skills which I did over time and with the help of my mentors, courses and seminars.”
Not only had she soon caught up with current research and updated her skills, but her research was starting to attract attention — so much so that she was able to secure a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship that provided her with 10 years of funding. With this funding she started to explore protein folding reactions, monitoring them by mass spectrometry to provide new insight into transient states.
In 2001, she returned to the University of Cambridge to continue her research into the mass spectrometry of protein assemblies and to become the first female professor in the department of chemistry. While at Cambridge she carried out her first experiments to determine the overall topology of proteins and began to project intact membrane protein complexes into the gas phase. She then returned to Oxford in 2009 to take up the Chair of Dr. Lee’s Professor of Chemistry, a position she holds to this day. In 2013, Robinson was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her contributions to science.
During her time at Oxford she has focused primarily on the relationship between membrane proteins and lipids. “We have recently discovered an entirely new way to study membrane proteins directly from their native environment without any chemical intervention. The approach involves sonication of lipid vesicles and then exposure of these sonicated vesicles to high fields in the mass spectrometer,” she shares. “The resulting mass spectra are incredibly complex, take many hours to interpret but have revealed new protein assemblies and previously unknown interactions between complexes. We’re very excited to see where this research leads us.”
Going forward, Robinson plans to adapt some of these recently developed mass spectrometry approaches to study protein complexes within their native environments. “I think we have a lot of opportunities to apply this approach to different membranes and vesicles – I am excited about the possibilities,” she says.
Despite being an accomplished leader in her field, she says that one of the most rewarding aspects of her job is to see young scientists in her research group going on to great positions and careers. She has always encouraged them to maintain the work–life balance. One of her own role models is Dorothy Hodgkin, who succeeded in raising three children as well as having a highly distinguished scientific career.
When she is not working, Robinson enjoys taking part in a wide range of outdoor activities, but especially running, which she tries to fit in regularly each week. “I also enjoy cooking, especially entertaining — I love to host friends and family around the table or outdoors in our garden,” she says.
Asked how she would describe her research to a sixth grade teacher, Robinson says, “My research explores proteins and their interactions in the gas phase — an entirely new medium in which proteins can be interrogated. In this phase the protein molecules are able to express themselves in different ways. We can learn new things about the ways in which they do this. I think of it as the proteins having freedom of movement – akin to running on a track as opposed to running in a swimming pool. The protein molecules are not constrained in the gas phase as they would be in solid or liquid states.”
Robinson recommends that young scientists focus on “the three ‘P’s – Passion, Perseverance and Plenty of both! Maintain the passion that brought you into this field originally — and even in the face of difficulties persevere for as long as it takes — you have to keep going. I often say that experiments are not failing — they are simply not working – yet!”