Alex Woods gained a BA in Human Sciences at St John's College, Oxford before going on to pursue a BBSRC Industrial Case Studentship developing transgenic codling moth for use in the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) at Oxford University, in association with Oxitec Ltd., obtaining his D.Phil in 2009.
He joined the Oxford Silk Group as a Post-Doc for one year where he pursued his interest in insect genetics to generate a database of silk and silk-like protein sequences to investigate phylogenetic relationships between silk genes, as well to identify novel amino acid sequences and their roles in the mechanical and binding properties of different spider and Lepidopteran silks.
He is currently reading for a medical degree on the Graduate-entry Medical Course at Pembroke College, Oxford, and is interested in developing potential novel uses for silks in medical prosthetics.
He has recently joined the Advisory Board of Oxford Biomaterials Ltd. and teaches "Behaviour and its evolution, animal and human" on the undergraduate Human Sciences and Biological Sciences courses at Oxford.
Prof. Fritz Vollrath and colleagues from the Fudan University in China are widely covered in the news for their discovery of a means to produce fake Rhino horns using horse hair. Hopes are that this product may undermine the illegal market for rhino horn, and demistify the properties of rhino horn. View Here
