Elected: 2020
Discipline: Organismal and Environmental Biology
Professor Jose Penades Casanova
Director of the Centre for Bacterial Resistance Biology, and Chair of Microbiology, Imperial College London
In July 2020, José R Penadés will take up the roles of Director of the MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection, and Chair of Microbiology at Imperial College. He is currently Professor of Microbiology at the University of Glasgow. Research in the Penadés lab has focused on the molecular basis of bacterial virulence, deciphering the mechanisms underlying the transfer of different mobile genetic elements (MGEs) involved in pathogenesis. Seminal contributions from his lab include the identification of a widespread family of MGEs, the Phage-Inducible Chromosomal Islands (PICIs), and discovery of the most powerful mode of phage transduction described to date: lateral transduction.