Andrea Hilary Brand (born March 9, 1959)[1] is the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Biology and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.
She graduated from the UN International School in New York and in 1977, inspired by the work of Rosalind Franklin, she moved to Britain to study biochemistry at the University of Oxford.
[12] She was there from 1981 to 1986, in which year she was awarded a Ph.D.[8][18] She then engaged in postdoctoral research work on yeast transcription at Harvard University,[12] where from 1986 to 1988 she was a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry, associated with the laboratory of Mark Ptashne.
[18] Having decided to switch from biochemistry to neurobiology,[12] Brand moved in the late 1980s to Norbert Perrimon's laboratory in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, where from 1988 to 1993 she was a Leukemia Society Special Fellow.
Since 2005 she has been Senior Group Leader there, and since 2007 she has been the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Biology both at that institution and at the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge.
[18] During these years Brand has performed work on nervous-system development that the Royal Society has described as “pioneering.”[16] According to the Royal Society, her study of the fruit fly's embryonic nervous system “has led to new insights into the biology of neural stem cells, and the ability of neurons to regenerate after damage.” Moreover, Brand “identified a novel role for a key regulator in cell division in controlling the strength of neuronal connections,” which “could help uncover new drug targets in the search for treatments for neural disorders such as Parkinson's and Huntington's disease.”[19] As one source explains, “Brand is looking for stem cells in adult fruit flies' brains and trying to understand how genes are regulated throughout life.
[20] Brand has provided this “plain English” explanation of her work: “One of the goals of research in neurobiology is to repair or regenerate neurons after damage to the brain or spinal cord.
In 2009 she served as Vice Chair of the Neuroscience Review Panel of the Swedish Research Council, and in the same year she was elected to a Fellowship at Jesus College, University of Cambridge.
[18] Brand was the chair of the jury that awarded the Royal Society Young People's Book Prize 2012 to Robert Winston's Science Experiments.
[18] In 2006, Brand was presented with the Royal Society's Rosalind Franklin Award,[20] which “recognises excellent scientific research and promotes women in science, engineering and technology.” She was selected for the award in recognition of “her groundbreaking contributions to the fields of gene regulation, developmental biology, cell biology and neurobiology.” Professor Julia Higgins, Vice President of the Royal Society, said: “Dr Andrea Brand is an extremely talented biologist.
Her work, connecting molecular genetics to the development and repair of the nervous system, has been of a consistently high standard and is directly relevant to tackling human disease.” Winners of the Rosalind Franklin Award are asked to undertake projects that raise the profile of women in science; Brand fulfilled this obligation by organizing two lecture series, one for schoolchildren and the other for university students, featuring prominent female researchers working in cell and developmental biology.