Interests:

We are investigating the pathogenic yeast in collaboration with Professor Neil Gow's team, Candida albicans. Candida normally lives in our gut, doing us no harm. However, it is also the cause of common infections such as thrush, and the cause of life-threatening infections in intensive care patients.

Our aim is to understand what makes this yeast so adept at switching from a harmless component of our microbiota into an aggressive cause of infection. In part this is because Candida is able to rapidly tune its own physiology to different niches within our bodies.

We are investigating the molecular mechanisms that mediate these adaptive responses to the local nutrients and environmental stresses in these niches, and the interactions between these nutrient and stress responses. This is increasing our understanding of how Candida survives inside us.

In the longer term, this will promote the development of better diagnostics and more effective antifungal therapies.

We are also studying the obligate intracellular pathogen Pneumocystis with a view to understanding how this fungal has adapted to its lifestyle in the human lung.

Research Group:

• Olga Nev - Independent Fellow
• Arnab Pradhan - Research Postdoctoral RA
• Ian Leaves - Research Technician

Career:

1979-1981 Research Scientist: Brewing Research Foundation, Surrey, UK

1981-1983 Postdoc Fellow: MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

1983-1989 Lecturer: University of Glasgow

1989-2019 Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, Professor: University of Aberdeen

2019- Professor: MRC Centre for Medical Mycology, University of Exeter

2002 SGM Kathleen Barton-Wright Memorial Prize

2004 Fellow, Institute of Biology (now Royal Society of Biology)

2005 Fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh

2008 Fellow, American Academy of Microbiology

2000-2003 Coordinator, Galar Fungail 1 Consortium

2008-2012 Coordinator, FINSysB Marie Curie Initial Training Network

2008-2014 Director, SABR Systems Biology Consortium (CRISP)

2010-2015 European Research Council Advanced Grant Holder (STRIFE)

2012-2019 Co-Director, Wellcome Trust Strategic Award in Medical Mycology & Fungal Immunology

2016-2023 Co-Director, MRC Centre for Medical Mycology