My lab tell me that “ALL important PIs have their CV on their website”, so in order to pretend to be important I’ve had to put mine here…embarrassing, huh?

I’m Professor of Infectious Diseases within the Institute of Microbiology & Infection and the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham.  At the moment, I’m on a 60% secondment to the UK government, as Chief Scientific Advisor at the Food Standards Agency.  The other 40% of my time is spent working with the lovely folk in the May Lab, trying to understand more about host-pathogen interactions.

PAST

1994-1997.  Undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford.

1997-2001  PhD with Laura Machesky at the Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, University College London, and latterly at the School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham.

2001  Budongo Forest Project, Uganda.

2001-2004  Human Frontier Science Program fellow with Ronald Plasterk, Hubrecht Laboratory, University of Utrecht

2005-2010  RCUK Fellow in Pathobiology, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham

2009-current  Editor, PLoS Pathogens

2010-2016  Lister Fellow, University of Birmingham

2011  Reader in Infectious Diseases

2013  Awarded the Colworth Medal of the Biochemical Society

2013  Professor in Infectious Diseases

2014  ERC Consolidator Awardee

2015  Royal Society Wolfson Merit Awardee

2015-current  Editor, Science Advances

2016-2020  Co-Director, Wellcome Trust PhD Programme in Mechanisms of Inflammatory Disease

2017 – 2020  Director, Institute of Microbiology & Infection

2020  Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology

2020  Elected Treasurer, Microbiology Society

2020-current  Chief Scientific Advisor, Food Standards Agency, UK Government