Biography

Caroline completed her GCSEs (2003-2005) and A-levels (2005-2007) in her home town of Bristol, before moving to the West Midlands to undertake her Chemistry degree at the University of Warwick. In July 2011 she graduated with a 1st Class Honours MChem in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry with Professional Experience.

During the second year of her degree (2009) Caroline undertook a Nuffield Foundation funded summer project at The University of Warwick entitled, “Exploring the biomaterial interface: what classes of protein are repelled by tertiary amine oxide surfacesLink opens in a new window?” and supervised by Dr Andrew Marsh.

The following year (April- June 2010) Caroline travelled to the University of TasmaniaLink opens in a new window in Australia, in order to obtain international research experience. Her project, “Investigating aspects of the total synthesis of thaxtomins and thaxtomin derivatives,” was supervised by Dr Jason Smith.

Caroline’s MChem project (2010- 2011), “Biomimetic glycopeptides for biomineralisation”, was undertaken in the Gibson group, where she remained to carry out her PhD. Caroline's PhD was entitled "Biointegrative Polymer Surfaces". The project spanned the Chemistry-Life Science interface and included thermoresponsive polymers, surface modification and characterisation (quartz-crystal microbalance, contact angle measurements, ellipsometry, XPS), carbohydrate immobolisation and binding, protein binding and host-pathogen responses. In addition to her PhD, Caroline also completed The Warwick Postgraduate Certificate in Transferable Skills and chose to focus on modules in academic scientific writing and project management.

Since completion of her PhD, Caroline has been studying novel compounds for ice recrystallisation inhibition and nucleation. She also facilitates research throughout the Gibson Group's 5 laboratories (synthetic chemistry, analytical chemistry, ice characterisation, cell culture and protein expression), supports a highly interdisciplinary team of 20 Masters and PhD students and takes responsibility for day-to-day student supervision, report and grant writing, international collaborations, science communication and outreach.

Current Role

As of July 2023, Caroline is undertaking a 14 month secondment as CDT & PG Scholarships Coordination Manager for the Doctoral College at the University of Warwick.

Publications

[16] Matthew T. Warren , Caroline I. Biggs ,Akalabya Bissoyi ,Matthew I. Gibson ,Gabriele C. Sosso, "Data-driven Discovery of Potent Small Molecule Ice Recrystallisation Inhibitors" ChemRxiv. 2023, preprint

[15] Alexander N. Baker, Sarah-Jane Richards, Sarojini Pandey, Collette S. Guy, Ashfaq Ahmad, Muhammad Hasan, Caroline I. Biggs, Panagiotis G. Georgiou, Alexander J Zwetsloot, Anne Straube, Simone Dedola, Robert A. Field, Dimitris Grammatopoulos, Neil R Anderson, Marc Walker, Matthew I. Gibson, M.I., "A Glycan-based Flow-Through Device for the Detection of SARS-COV-2" ACS Sensors, 2021, 6, 3696–3705

[14] Angela Casillo, Antonio Fabozzi, Irene Russo Krauss, Ermenegilda Parrilli, Caroline I. Biggs, Matthew I. Gibson, Rosa Lanzetta, Marie-Sousai Appavou, Aurel Radulescu, Maria L. Tutino, Luigi Paduano and Maria M. Corsaro, "Physicochemical Approach to Understanding the Structure Conformation, and Activity of Mannan Polysaccharides", Biomacromolecules, 2021, 2, 1445-1457

[12] Laura E. Wilkins, Muhammad Hasan, Alice E. R. Fayter, Caroline I. Biggs, Marc Walker and Matthew I. Gibson, "Site-specific conjugation of antifreeze proteins onto polymer-stabilized nanoparticles", Polymer Chemistry, 2019, 10, 2986-2990

[11] Benjamin Martyn, Caroline I. Biggs, and Matthew I. Gibson, "Comparison of systematically functionalized heterogeneous and homogenous glycopolymers as toxin inhibitors", Journal of Polymer Science Part A: Polymer Chemistry, 2019, 57, 40-47

[10] Caroline I. Biggs, Trisha L. Bailey, Ben Graham, Christopher Stubbs, Alice Fayter and Matthew I. Gibson, "Polymer mimics of biomacromolecular antifreezes", Nature Communications, 2017, 8, 1546

[9] Nicholas Vail, Christopher Stubbs, Caroline I. Biggs and Matthew I. Gibson, "Ultra-Low Dispersity Poly(vinyl alcohol) Reveals Significant Dis-persity Effects on Ice Recrystallization Inhibition Activity", ACS Macro Letters, 2017, 6, 1001–1004

[8] Antonio Laezza, Angela Casillo, Sandro Cosconati, Caroline I. Biggs, Antonio Fabozzi, Luigi Paduano, Alfonso Iadonisi, Ettore Novellino, Matthew I. Gibson, Antonio Randazzo, Maria M. Corsaro, and Emiliano Bedini, "Decoration of Chondroitin Polysaccharide with Threonine: Synthesis, Conformational Study, and Ice-Recrystallization Inhibition Activity," Biomacromolecules, 2017, 18 (8), 2267–2276

[7] Caroline I. Biggs, Christopher Packer, Steven Hindmarsh, Marc Walker, Neil. R. Wilson,
Jonathan P. Rourke and Matthew I. Gibson, "Impact of Sequential Surface-Modification of Graphene Oxide on Ice Nucleation", Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2017, 19, 21929-21932

[6] Nga Sze Ieong, Caroline I. Biggs, Marc Walker and Matthew I. Gibson, "Comparison of RAFT derived Poly(vinylpyrolidone) verses Poly(oligoethyleneglycol methacrylate) for the Stabilization of Glycosylated Gold Nanoparticles", Journal of Polymer Science, Part A, 2017, 55(7), 1200-1208

[5] Caroline I. Biggs, Marc Walker and Matthew I. Gibson, ‘Grafting to’ of RAFTed Responsive Polymers to Glass Substrates by Thiol-Ene and Critical Comparison to Thiol-Gold Coupling, Biomacromolecules, 2016, 17 (8), 2626–2633Link opens in a new window

[4] Sarah-Jane Richards, Caroline I. Biggs and Matthew I. Gibson. Methods in Molecular Biology; Macro-Glycoligands, Series Vol 1367 "Multivalent Glycopolymer-coated Gold Nanoparticles", 2016, e-book ISBN 978-1-4939-3130-9, Hard Cover ISBN 978-1-4939-3129-3

Outreach Work

Caroline is passionate about outreach work and is a STEM Ambassador. In particular, she enjoys working to increase the number of pupils from under-represented backgrounds progressing to highly-selective universities.

She has worked as a tutor for the Brilliant Club for 9 years, where she designs and delivers programmes of academic enrichment tutorials, based on aspects of her research, to state school pupils. She is also a Realising Opportunities academic tutor, working to support the progression of talented students to leading research intensive universities. Additionally, she works collaboratively with the Brilliant Club and the University of Warwick's UniTracks program to deliver e-tutorials to pupils in less accessible, rural locations. More details about Caroline's outreach teaching can be found below.

Awards

• Caroline was part of the team who were awarded a prestigious Horizon Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2022 for our work on "development, application and translation of chemical tools for cryobiology". This award recognised the great achievements of the Gibson Group and our collaborators at Warwick: Sosso, Whale and Notman as well as our industrial partners Cytivia and Cryologyx. Caroline first worked in the cryobiology field for her MChem project, switched focus for her PhD and then returned back to her original passion for "Team Ice" for her postdoctoral research, which she is still continuing.

  https://www.rsc.org/prizes-funding/prizes/2022-winners/team-ice/Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window

  https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/university_of_warwick_scientists_win_three_prestigious_royal_society_of_chemistry_prizes1Link opens in a new window

• Caroline has successfully achieved Bronze LEAF certification for the Gibson Group labs in Chemistry and The Medical School 2021/22 academic year. Following a successful portfolio submission and inspection we were provided with the following feedback "The Gibson lab is a fantastic example of a lab that is working with the support of the PI to consider sustainability across every aspect of their work. During the audit it was great to hear that LEAF has encouraged lab users to implement some of the sustainability practices that have been discussed before but never implemented. There are some great examples of best practice, which could be shared with others outside of the lab, including the successful annual inventory check."
• First place poster prize awarded at the Symposium on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology 2016 (Birmingham, UK)
• First place poster prize awarded at the Summer Course Glycosciences 2014 (Wageningen, The Netherlands)
• Third place poster prize awarded at the Macro Group UK Young Researchers' Meeting 2014 (Durham, UK)

Conference Organisation

• Midlands Young Researcher Meeting on Nanomaterials, The University of Warwick, 17/10/2015. A one day meeting, funded by the RSC Materials Division, bringing together PhD students and early career researchers from the Universities of Warwick, Nottingham, Loughborough, Liverpool and Bristol and industrial chemists.

Presentations

Oral Presentations:

• International Carbohydrate Conference, New Orleans, USA (17/07/16 - 21/07/16)
• COST MultiGlycoNano Conference, Antalya, Turkey (28/10/2015- 31/10/2015)
• Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry, 250th ACS National Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (16/08/2015 - 20/08/2015)
• Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry, 250th ACS National Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (16/08/2015 - 20/08/2015)
• COST MultiGlycoNano Training School, Bangor University, Wales, UK (09/04/15 - 11/04/15)
• RSC Carbohydrate Group Autumn Meeting, The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (08/09/14 - 09/09/14)
• BBSRC Midlands Symposium, The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (01/09/14 - 02/09/14)
• Department of Chemistry Postgraduate Symposium, The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (28/05/14)
• Summer Course Glycosciences (13th European Training Course on Carbohydrates), Wageningen, The Netherlands (13/04/14 - 17/04/14). Oral presentation awarded as the first place poster prize.
• School of Life Sciences Postgraduate Symposium, The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (24/03/14 - 26/04/14)

Poster Presentations:

• Advanced Polymers via Macromolecular Engineering (APME), Ghent, Belgium (21/05/17 - 25/05/2017)
• Symposium on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, The University of Birmingham, UK (13/12/2016)
• Warwick Polymer 2016, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (11/07/16 - 16/07/16)
• 12th International Conference on Materials Chemistry (MC12), York University, UK (20/07/15 - 24/07/15)
• COST MultiGlycoNano Training School, Bangor University, Wales, UK (09/04/15 - 11/04/15)
• Emerging Nanomaterials for Healthcare, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (28/10/14)
• BBSRC CEO Visit, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (10/11/14)
• BBRSC Midlands Symposium, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (01/09/14 - 02/09/14)
• Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry, 248th ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, California, USA (09/08/14 - 14/08/14)
• Macro Group UK Young Researchers' Meeting, Durham University, UK (24/07/14 - 25/07/14)
• RSC Younger Members Symposium, The University of Birmingham, UK (24/06/14)
• Summer Course Glycosciences (13th European Training Course on Carbohydrates), Wageningen, The Netherlands (13/04/14 - 17/04/14)

• RSC Chemical Biology Conference, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (01/04/14)

• First Annual Polymer Club Symposium, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (02/09/13)
• 10th IUPAC International Conference on Advanced Polymers via Macromolecular Engineering, Durham University, UK (18/08/13 - 22/08/13)
• 11th International Conference on Materials Chemistry (MC11), University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (08/07/13 - 11/07/13)
• School of Life Sciences Postgraduate Symposium, The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (18/03/13 - 20/03/13)
• RSC/ Biochemical Society Carbohydrate Group Younger Members Meeting, Burlington House, Royal Society of Chemistry, London, UK (11/03/13)
• RSC Biomaterials Chemistry Group 7th Annual Meeting, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK (08/01/13 - 09/01/13)
• RSC Postgraduate Symposium on Nanotechnology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK (14/12/12)
• Warwick Polymer 2012, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (09/07/12 - 12/07/12)

Grants and Bursaries

• RSC Materials Chemistry Division Award (£800) to support attendence at the International Carbohydrate Symposium 2016 in New Orleans, USA
• RSC Small Grants for Scientific Activities (£500) awarded by the RSC Materials Division to support the running of the Midlands Young Researcher Meeting on Nanomaterials at The University of Warwick
• RSC Materials Chemistry Division Award (£800) to support attendence at the 250th ACS National Meeting in Boston, USA
• RSC Travel Grant (£150) to support attendence at the MC12 conference in York
• COST/ IBCarb funding (£400) to support attendence at the COST MultiGlycoNano Training School in Bangor
• Macrogroup DH Richards Bursary (£250), to support attendance at the Summer Course Glycosciences 2014 in The Netherlands
• RSC Chemical Biology Interface Division Travel Grant (£200), to support attendance at the Summer Course Glycosciences 2014 in The Netherlands

Other Interests

Outside of work, Caroline is kept busy with her two young daughters. She also helps to run a community playgroup in her village and has been an Explorer Scout Leader for over 10 years.

Images

Caroline was part of the team who were awarded the RSC Horizon Prize for their work on Cryobiology, 2022

Caroline wins the first place poster prize at the Symposium on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, 2016

Caroline wins the first place poster prize at the Summer Course Glycosciences, 2014

Caroline wins third place poster prize at the Macro Group Young Researchers' Meeting, 2014
 

Caroline's Brilliant Club Handbooks, designed to support the students in learning about her research. "Polymers: from plastic bags to heathcare diagnostics" for Year 12 pupils (age 16-17). This course has been delivered to pupils at Painsley Catholic College, Barking Abbey School and King Edward VI Sheldon Heath Academy.

"Can we freeze a human?" for Year 10 (age 14-15) pupils. This course has been delivered to pupils at Bartley Green School, Wood Green Academy, Barr Beacon School, Sidney Stringer Academy, Finham Park 2, Houlton and through on-line tutorials to pupils in a selection of Coventry and London Schools.

"How Many Engineers does it take to make an ice cream" course designed by UCL engineering department and delivered by Caroline to Year 6 (age 10-11) pupils at Old Park Primary in Telford.

Education

The University of Warwick

MChem

Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry with Professional Experience, 1st Class Honours, 2007-2011

PhD

Chemistry (Biointegrative Polymer Surfaces), 2011-2015

Contact

Email: c.biggs[AT]warwick.ac.uk

Lab: 1.05/1.07 (MAS)

Address: Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL

Orcid ID: Orcid.org/0000-0002-8007-3132