Ottoline Leyser


Dame Ottoline Leyser is a British plant biologist and Professor of Plant Development at the University of Cambridge, director of UK Research and Innovation and the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge.

Education

Leyser was educated at the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate student of Newnham College, Cambridge where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences in 1986 followed by a PhD in Genetics in 1990 for research supervised by Ian Furner.

Research and career

Her postdoctoral research at Indiana University preceded a lectureship at the University of York, where Leyser worked from 1994 - 2010. In 2010, Leyser was appointed Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory and Professor of Plant Development at the University of Cambridge.
Leyser's research interests are in the genetics of plant development and the interaction of plant hormones with the environment. Leyser is chair of the University of Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy Management Committee. In 2020 she was appointed the Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation.

Awards and honours

Leyser was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007. Her nomination reads:
Leyser was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2009 New Year Honours. She was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics from 2009 to 2015 and a member of the Council’s Working Party on Biofuels.
She was elected a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2012. She has been a Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 2014.
In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Also in 2016, she was awarded the Genetic Society Medal, an award which recognises outstanding contributions to genetics research.
She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to plant science, science in society, and equality and diversity in science. In the same year, she was awarded the Women in Science Award from the European Molecular Biology Organization and the Federation of European Biochemical Societies.

Personal life

Leyser is the daughter of the historians Henrietta Leyser and Karl Leyser. She married Stephen John Day in 1986 and has one son and one daughter. In 2017 she was a guest of Jim Al-Khalili on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Life Scientific.