Professor at Warwick Medical School (since 2020)

Director of Warwick Biomedical Sciences (2022-2025)

Co-founder and member of the Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology at the University of Warwick (since 2010)

Member of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine (since 2019)

Advisory Board of DGZ, the German Society for Cell Biology (since 2020)

Member of the International Affairs Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology (2022-2025)

Chair of Wellcome Molecular Mechanism Advisory Group (2023-2026)

Justin trained as a biologist at the University of York, UK and went on to study the molecular mechanism of muscle contraction for his PhD. He held a NATO post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Vermont, working on the mechanical properties of insect flight muscle.

He then returned to the University of York where together with David White he developed optical tweezers to measure the force and movement produced by a single myosin molecule. He obtained a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and his new lab developed single molecule methods in order to study how biological molecules work both in vitro and within living cells.

Justin moved to the MRC National Institute for Medical Research and joined the Francis Crick Institute in 2015. His research team used single molecule techniques; including optical and magnetic tweezers, TIRF microscopy and atomic force microscopy to help increase our understanding of energy transduction by biological macromolecules. He left the Francis Crick Institute in 2022, but remains a visiting scientist within the Laboratory of Dr. Peter Rosenthal.

Justin joined the University of Warwick, Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology in 2022 where he is developing magnetic tweezers for in vivo studies (with Andrew McAinsch and Michael Smutney) and a dual optical tweezer device for measuring the force and movement developed by individual myosin molecules (with Mohan Balasubramanian) and kinesin molecules (with Rob Cross and Anne Straube).

He served as Chair of the Board of Trustees for the National DeafBlind charity SENSE (2017-2025)

Qualifications and Awards:

1983 BSc Hons, Physiology, University of York

1987 PhD Biophysics, University of York

1998 Society of Experimental Biology, President‘s medal

2000 European Biophysical Societies Association, Annual Prize for Biophysics

2003 Koerber Stiftung, European Science Prize