Elected: 2021
Discipline: Biomedical and Cognitive Sciences
Professor Eleanor Riley
A veterinarian by training, Eleanor obtained her first degree in cellular pathology and her PhD in immunology and parasitology. She has spent more than 30 years as an infectious disease immunologist, working primarily on malaria, initially at the Medical Research Council Laboratories in The Gambia, then as a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and subsequently as Professor of Infectious Disease Immunology and Head of the Department of Immunology and Infection at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Eleanor moved back to the University of Edinburgh in 2017 as Director of the Roslin Institute. She took up her current post in the Institute of Immunology and Infection Research in 2020. She is a member of Council of the MRC and of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Science Media Centre and is currently serving on the UKRI COVID-19 task force.