Ruth Duncan is Professor of Cell Biology and Drug Delivery at the Welsh School of Pharmacy, School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, UK and Director of the Centre for Polymer Therapeutics. She completed her PhD studies in 1979 at Keele University and established there the CRC's Polymer-Controlled Drug Delivery Group. In 1992 she joined Farmitalia Carlo Erba (became Pharmacia now Pfizer) in Milan as Head of New Technologies. In 1994 she returned to the The School of Pharmacy, London where she established the Centre for Polymer Therapeutics before relocating to Cardiff in 2000. Throughout she has had an interest in development of polymer therapeutics from laboratory to clinic and her research at Keele and time in industry developed the first polymer anticancer conjugates into Phase I/II clinical trial, 6 conjugates and 2 gamma camera imaging agents have followed. An interest in dendrimers for drug delivery began in 1995.

She has contributed more than 200 scientific articles and patents, and has been a recipient of many awards including the Pfizer Research Award for Pharmaceutical Sciences, Young Investigator Award of the Controlled   Release Society, Interdisciplinary Award of the Royal Society for Chemistry, the Millennial World Congress Pharmaceutical Scientist Award and the Berlin-Brandenberg Academy Monika Knutzner Award for Innovative Cancer Research. She is an elected member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, and in 2004   was the Science Chair of the British Pharmaceutical Conference and the Chair of the European Science Foundation's Steering Committee : Forward Look on Nanomedicine.