My pronouns are he/him
I am a microbiologist working at the interface of bacterial physiology, chemical biology and antimicrobial discovery. My research seeks to understand how bacterial pathogens adapt to changing environments, acquire and use essential nutrients, generate energy and maintain cellular homeostasis, and how these processes influence their survival within the host. My group is particularly interested in vulnerabilities that emerge under physiologically and host-relevant conditions, including cellular processes that become essential only in specific environments. We use genetic and chemical approaches to uncover these dependencies, define their biological significance and examine how they can be perturbed by small molecules. In this way, antimicrobial compounds serve both as probes of bacterial physiology and as starting points for drug discovery.
This work has contributed to the discovery and development of telacebec, a clinical-stage inhibitor of mycobacterial respiration for tuberculosis, leprosy and Buruli ulcer, as well as to the identification of broader principles governing bacterial survival and antimicrobial susceptibility.
As Director of the Ineos Oxford Institute for antimicrobial research (IOI), I work across disciplines to connect fundamental microbiology with chemistry, computation and medicine, and to help shape collaborative approaches to understanding and addressing bacterial infection.
