Pope appoints Cambridge professor to Pontifical Academy of Sciences

On Saturday, Pope Francis appointed Sir David Charles Baulcombe to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Professor Baulcombe is a botanist, on the faculty of the Department of Plant Sciences at Cambridge University in the UK.

He was born on April 7, 1952 in Solihull and studied at the Universities of Leeds and Edinburgh, obtaining his PhD.

Professor Baulcombe has taught at various universities. His research has focused on genetic regulation, discovering how gene expression can be regulated at the level of ribonucleic acid (RNA) during normal development and disease resistance.

Since 2017 he has been Professor of Research at the Royal Society and Professor of Botany in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

He has received several awards in the scientific field.