Judy Hirst


Judy Hirst is a British scientist specialising in mitochondrial biology. She is Interim Director of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge,

Education and early life

Hirst grew up in a village near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and studied chemistry at St John's College, Oxford. She was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree for research supervised by Fraser Armstrong on the electron transport in redox enzymes in 1997.

Career and research

Following her D.Phil., Hirst held a fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute in California, before moving to Cambridge.
Hirst is Dean of the college and Fellow and Director of Studies in Chemistry at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Her main research interest is mitochondrial complex I.

Awards and honours

Hirst was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018. She was awarded an Interdisciplinary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the same year.