Professor Keith Jones
Bsc (Hons) 1 University of Leeds 1989
PhD University of Liverpool 1994
I initially worked from 1994 to 1997, in my first postdoctoral position at the Medical Research Council Experimental Embryology & Teratology Unit in London; having completed a PhD at the University of Liverpool in 1994. This Unit was under the directorship of Professor David Whittingham, and here I got experience in the intracellular imaging of mouse oocytes. I examined the way in which sperm-driven changes in intracellular calcium at fertilization were regulated and how they affected embryo quality, helping to establish a link between early events of fertilization and long term embryo quality.
I went on to a second postdoctoral position (1997-1998) in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at University College London, in the lab of Professor Karl Swann, where I helped in the discovery of sperm-specific phospholipase C zeta.
Until recently (1998 – January 2008) I held an academic position in the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences at the University of Newcastle-upon Tyne, UK. I became the Chair in Reproductive Physiology in 2005. My research team helped develop the use of Fluorescent Proteins to study the process of meiosis in real-time. This approach led to recent developments in the understanding of how the meiotic divisions are regulated.
In February 2008 I moved to the University of Newcastle, Australia, as Professor and Chair in Human Physiology, and Co-Director of the University Priority Research Centre in Reproductive Biology. I currently sit on the ARC's College of Experts and am a member of the Faculty of 1000.
Professor Keith Jones