Paul Matthews

Housemaster for Zeus House

After finishing his degree here in Cambridge, Paul started work at the newly created Wellcome Trust Sanger Centre in 1994; an organisation located close by the city and now famous for decoding the Human Genome. Paul was a part of that exciting project as a genome scientist and bioinformatician for a number of years before moving to work in the Genetics Directorate of GlaxoSmithKline, focusing on gene expression informatics.

Paul then returned to academia, working in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute, co-located on the Wellcome Genome Campus, as their Head of Industry Programmes. (Paul also spent 18 months working in a small ‘global’ genomics start-up company).

Having enjoyed all aspects of the teaching that he did in each of those jobs, Paul re-trained as a Teacher of Sciences in 2007 here at Cambridge, and enjoyed teaching sciences at the two state schools he worked in before moving to Abbey (he even got to teach both of his own children!). In his previous school, where he worked for 10 years, Paul was quickly promoted within the science department and then to the position of Head of Upper School, responsible for the pastoral and academic support of ~360 students and their progression to 6th form studies.

Paul has been with Abbey College for 3 years as a Housemaster, responsible for the pastoral and academic support of the students in Zeus House, and also teaches Chemistry.

When Paul is not looking after students, he plays, coaches and umpires hockey, and spends (too much!) time playing golf.