Claire Wathes

Wathes is an elected fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) and the Royal Society of Biology. She has served on the council of the Royal Society of Biology since 2017, and has also held roles on the committees of several other learned societies, including the European Society of Domestic Animal Reproduction, the Society for Endocrinology and the Society for Reproduction and Fertility.

She was married to Christopher Wathes, also a veterinary researcher; he died in 2016.

Her awards include RASE's Research Medal (2006) for her work on fertility in dairy cattle, and the Society for Reproduction and Fertility's Marshall Medal (2015).

From 2000 to 2008, Wathes chaired "ARK-Genomics", the steering committee of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Investigating Gene Function Initiative for livestock, which aimed to facilitate genomics research across the UK. She became the first director of the Farm Animal Genetics and Genomics Faraday Partnership in 2002, and she continues to serve on a committee of its successor body, the Knowledge Transfer Network. She also served on the veterinary advisory committee of the Horserace Betting Levy Board (from 1997 until 2006 or 2008).

Her first postdoctoral post was at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. From 1979 to 1990, she worked in the University of Bristol's Department of Anatomy, holding positions successively as lecturer and reader, before rejoining the Babraham Institute as a project leader (1990–94). She has been professor of veterinary reproduction at the Royal Veterinary College since 1994, leading the college's Reproduction and Development Group from 1995 to 2007. She also holds a guest professorship at Huazhong Agricultural University in China (since 2009).

Wathes gained a BSc in zoology from the University of Birmingham in 1974. Her PhD on fertility in dairy cattle was from the University of Nottingham in 1978, under the supervision of Eric Lamming; her thesis was entitled "Progesterone levels and fertility of lactating cows". In 1990, she was awarded a DSc by the University of Bristol.

(Dorothy) Claire Wathes née Bulman (born 1953) is a British veterinary researcher who studies the reproduction of farm animals. She is known for her work on infertility in dairy cattle. As of 2018, she is a professor of veterinary reproduction at the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield.