Warwick Medical School launches new four million pound Division of Microbiology and Infection
Warwick Medical School has this week established a new four million pound Division of Microbiology and Infection, a vibrant new research community of around twenty staff and post graduate students, headed up by Professor Mark Pallen.
The Dean of Warwick Medical School, Professor Peter Winstanley said, “I am thrilled to see this coming to life. The importance of microbiology and infection cannot be over-emphasized. Diseases like malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis stalk the planet, while even in developed countries, pathogens all too often contaminate our food or infect vulnerable patients in our hospitals.”
The new Division will benefit from state of the art laboratory facilities, including a MiSeq high-throughput sequencing instrument.
Professor Pallen explained “I’m delighted to see Warwick making such a bold commitment to our discipline. The need for new investment in this area has been reinforced by the recent report by the Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, ramming home the need for a better understanding of the evolution and spread of multi-drug resistant pathogens and how we can best avoid and treat the infections they cause.”
Amongst those being recruited is world class clinical academic, Dr Esther Robinson, who will act as an important bridge between the new Division and translational research into clinical microbiological problems with clinical sessions at the Heart of England NHS Trust.
Professor Winstanley summarised the goal for the new Division, “My aim is for the new Division to operate on both a national and international scale. With that in mind, I am delighted to see Professor Pallen initiate links with microbiologists at the MRC Centre in Gambia. But I am also keen to see the new Division act as a starting point for a new campus-wide Research Centre that will integrate laboratory-based research with a much wider range of research activities, from epidemiology to the history of medicine, from medicinal chemistry to clinical infectious diseases, while also catalyzing links with other key regional, national and global stake-holders, including the health services, industry, government and NGOs.”
Notes to editors:
For further information or to arrange interviews with Professor Pallen, contact Luke Harrison, Press Officer on +44 (0)2476 574255/150483, m: +44(0)7920 531221 or luke.harrison@warwick.ac.uk
To read the full report by Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer, from 11 March 2013 visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/chief-medical-officer-annual-report-volume-2