Dr. Perdita Barran holds a chair of mass spectrometry in the School of Chemistry and is director of the Michael Barber Centre for Collaborative Mass Spectrometry at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology at The University of Manchester in the UK.

Dr. Barran's research interests include biological mass spectrometry (technique used to sort chemicals), instrument and technique development, protein structure and interactions, hydrogen/deuterium exchange (technique used to study higher-order structures), proteomics (large-scale study of proteins) and molecular modeling. She is an editor of the International Journal of Mass Spectrometry and is on the editorial board of Analyst and ACS Central Science. Dr. Barran has authored over 90 publications in peer-reviewed journals, which have been cited well over 2,300 times. In 2009, in recognition of her achievements, Dr. Barran was awarded the inaugural Joseph Black award by the Royal Society of Chemistry Analytical Division.