Tompkins-Falkow Lectureship

Gordon Dougan FMedSci, FRS

"A molecular path to affordable vaccines"

Professor Dougan is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Medicine at Cambridge University and former Director of the Infection Health Challenge area at Wellcome, UK. He is an internationally recognised expert in vaccinology, global health, and infections. He was the Head of Pathogens at The Wellcome Sanger Institute (WTSI) for over a decade and worked in the pharmaceutical industry (Wellcome Foundation/GSK) for part of his career, developing novel vaccines and other medicines. He has worked as an advisor to health agencies, industry, academia, and regulatory agencies. He is an expert on the molecular basis of infection with a strong emphasis on pathogenic mechanisms/immunity, genomics, disease tracking, and antiobiotic resistance. He is current President of the Microbiology Society of the UK.

Before moving to the WTSI, he was the founding Director of the Centre for Molecular Microbiology and Infection at Imperial College London and a Profesor of Biochemistry. He is a member of EMBO, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a Fellows of the Royal Society. He has received awards nationally and internationally, including the Albert B Sabin Gold Medal for his work on Affordable Vaccines. He received his BSc and PhD from the University of Sussex and holds honorary degrees at Trinity College Dublin (MA), Cambridge University (MA), and Imperial College (DSc). He conducted postdoctoral studies at the University of Washington (Seattle) in the laboratory of the Lasker Prize winner, Stanley Falkow. He is a founder of Microbiotica.