Professor Helen Saibil is a molecular biologist and the Bernal professor of structural biology in Birkbeck’s School of Natural Sciences.

Her research is largely focused on molecular chaperones and protein misfolding.

Saibil completed undergraduate studies at McGill University in 1971 followed by a PhD at King’s College London, receiving her thesis in 1977 entitled Diffraction studies of retinal rod outer segment membranes. Saibil went on to work at CEA Grenoble and the University of Oxford. Saibil has been at Birkbeck since 1989, and was elected to the Royal Society in 2006 and the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2009.