Dr Christopher Cooper

Chris joined the University of Surrey as a Senior Lecturer in Biotechnology in November 2025. Prior to this, he spent four years in the biotechnology sector as  Director and Head of Protein Sciences at CHARM Therapeutics, and at the contract research organisation Peak Proteins (now Sygnature Discovery).

For most of his career Chris researched the biochemistry and structural molecular biology of DNA repair and replication. He was a Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences at the University of Huddersfield for 6 years, focusing on the genome integrity factors POLQ and POLDIP2, alongside archaeal DNA polymerases and bacterial and human DNA helicases. He performed his postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, working at the Structural Genomics Consortium and Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, researching the cancer-related DNA repair proteins POLQ, ZRANB3 and ALC1/CHD1L, alongside ETS transcription factors. During this period Chris was also a College Lecturer in Biochemistry at The Queen’s College, and a Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College.

Chris studied Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, where he also received a DPhil in Engineering Science, and has an MRes in Bioinformatics from the University of York. Chris is very active in the Biochemical Society, where he is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Society journal Bioscience Reports and a member of the Industry Advisory Panel.