Rosalind J. Allen

Allen joined AMOLF as a Marie Curie Fellow, working on models of switching events between metastable states, which are rare.^[7][8] She was part of the group who developed Forward Flux Sampling,^[9] which simulates rare equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems and allows the calculation of rate constants.^[7][10]

She joined the University of Edinburgh as a Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Research Fellow in 2006.^[2] Allen is interested in organisms such as bacteria grow in complicated environments.^[11] She was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2009, studying the non-equilibrium interactions of microbes with their environments.^[12] She joined the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Young Academy of Scotland in 2012 and was promoted to Reader in 2013.^[2]

She has studied how microbes are involved with the sulphur cycle, which releases significant amounts of carbon as microbes consume hydrogen from organic matter.^[12] She analyses microbial ecology and nutrient cycles using Winogradsky columns, developing models that predict long-term microbial dynamics and chemical composition.^[13] She studies how microbial populations develop on different surfaces, identifying what factors influence the structure.^[12] Bacterial colonies self-assemble on soft gel surfaces, and Allen has modelled how they compete for space.^[14] Allen uses algorithms to study the metabolic pathways of sugars.^[15] She delivered the 2017 SCI: where science meets business Sir Eric Rideal Lecture.^[16] Her work has been supported by the United States Army Research Laboratory.^[17]

Allen delivered her inaugural lecture in 2018, discussing how physicists can contribute to antimicrobial resistance.^[18][11] Her research into antimicrobial resistance considers how antibiotic drugs interact with the physiology of a cell.^[19] She has also looked at how microbes evolve in drug gradients; finding that drug resistance is accelerated by the presence of a gradient.^[20] This occurs because bacteria enter the gradient in waves, with each more resistant than the one that proceeded it.^[20] Resistant mutant bacteria at the edges of the population wave exist at low density and do not compete with nearby cells.^[20] Allen published a statistical physics guide to bacterial growth in 2018.^[21]

In 2005 Allen was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Meldola Medal and Prize.^[22] She was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) in 2009.^[23][12]

Allen is married with two daughters.^[23][12]