Ros is Professor of Biogeochemistry, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, having received her PhD from Cambridge University in 1995 and studied at Harvard for her post-doc with Dan Schrag.

The goal of Ros’ research is to develop ways to reconstruct and understand the co-evolution of life and Earth’s climate. She has blended biology and chemistry to tackle questions of past climates, evolution, and the future of the phytoplankton. Ros’ distinctive approach is to read geological history from signals of adaptation within genes of modern organisms, which play out in the evolving affinity and kinetics of the expressed enzymes, or isotopic signals of adaptation that leave a footprint in fossils and biomolecules.

Ros has authored over 150 papers and co-authored a book “Evolution’s Destiny: Co-evolving chemistry of the environment and life”.

In 2008 Ros received the European Geosciences Union’s Outstanding Young Scientist award and in 2010 the American Geophysical Union’s James B. Macelwane Award for significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by an outstanding young scientist. She held a Wolfson Research Merit Award from the Royal Society and was made FRS in 2022.