Melody Clark

Professor Melody Clark is an Individual Merit Promotion Scientist (IMP) and Project Leader at BAS. She has a genetics degree and PhD from London University. After a string of short-term post doc contracts working on areas ranging from plant chromosomes to the high-profile Japanese pufferfish genome project, she finally landed a job as Project Leader at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in August 2003. She currently leads the Adaptations group, which studies two main areas: how animals adapt to the extreme cold and how they may react in the face of predicted climate change, also how molluscs produce their shells (essential protection if there’s a large iceberg in the area for the Antarctic species, not really a problem for the temperate species we study). Grant income is currently running at over £7M in the past 10 years, with the most recent significant grant being PI and Co-ordinator of the EU Marie Curie Initial Training Network FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN Project no: 605051: CACHE: CAlcium in a CHanging Environment, from November 2013 with a budget of circa €3.7M. In 2007 She was awarded the Senior Prize for Outstanding Women in Marine Biological Sciences Prize, awarded by the EU-FP6 Network of Excellence, Marine Genomics Europe. She was also awarded the Polar Medal (Arctic and Antarctic) in 2022, for her scientific contribution to the Polar Sciences.