Dr Oscar Ces

Dr Oscar Ces co-chair of Imperial's Institute of Chemical Biology has been promoted to Reader in Chemical Biology & Membrane Biophysics.

Dr Oscar Ces is co-chair of Imperial's Institute of Chemical Biology. He has just been promoted to Reader in Chemical Biology & Membrane Biophysics in the Department of Chemistry.

In his research life he develops technologies to study and manipulate biological systems at the single cell level, one day hoping to manufacture artificial cells that are capable of sensing and responding to their environment.

Having gone to school just down the road in Pimlico and then Fulham in later years Imperial has always felt like home. “When we used to visit the Science Museum on school trips I never thought I would end up working just next door one day,” says Dr Ces.

"I have always been fascinated by how cells work and the fact that no two cells are quite the same. Despite the individual nature of cells most techniques rely on population based averages to measure their contents, which means we lose key information about cellular heterogeneity and are limited in our ability to study cells that are only available in small quantities like stem cells.

"The analogy I often allude to is that of an alien coming to earth to figure out how the human race works. The last thing you would want to have to do is put the entire human race in a blender to then only be able to make one measurement. What you would want to do is take apart each human and study them one at a time to build up a picture of how we work!”

Dr Ces is also Director of its Centre for Doctoral Training in Chemical Biology, training over 145 PhD graduates to pursue careers in industry and academia, over 85% of whom go on to further careers in science.