WH Pierce prize

The 2020 WH Pierce Prize was awarded to Dr Joan Geoghegan, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology and Infection at Institute of Microbiology and Infection, University of Birmingham.

Exploring the first contact between microbe and their host during the early life developmental window

How to kill your rivals – Type VI secretion system-mediated bacterial warfare.

Controlling Biofilms: Probing the Future, Mining the Past

Invisible influence: how the indoor microbiome influences health

Biofilms: looking closely at the matrix

Integrating principles of predictive microbiology in food processing

Bacterial genome sequence data to conduct comparative analyses

Human gut mobile metagenome

Mechanisms of quinolone resistance in Escherichia coli

Rapid identification of antimicrobial resistance genes in Gram-negative bacteria

Dr Paul Cotter is a Funded Investigator at the APC Microbiome Institute, University College Cork, Ireland.

Dr Dennis Linton is a microbiologist at University of Manchester. He largely works on Campylobacters and related species, glycosylation and gene regulation.

Roy is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biological Sciences and a principal investigator at the Centre for Research in Advanced Therapeutic Engineering (CREATE) at Cork Institute of Technology.

Andrew is a professor at the School of Pharmacy, University of Manchester. He studied for a PhD in in medical microbial ecology at University of Cambridge with the MRC at Addenbrooke's Hospital.

Andrew Sails is the assay research area manager for QuantuMDx group where he manages their assay development programme. Prior to joining QuantuMDx he was a consultant clinical scientist at the Public Health England Public Health Laboratory in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Jean-Yves Maillard is professor of pharmaceutical microbiology at Cardiff University. He completed a PhD on ‘the mechanisms of action biocides against viruses’ at the Welsh School of Pharmacy.

Phil Hill is associate professor in microbiology at the University of Nottingham. His research interests fall into three areas: bacterial gene control, imaging and synthetic biology.

Stephen is associate dean of research at Lincoln University, New Zealand, Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Senior public health microbiologist at Public Health England

This research focuses on Campylobacter jejuni, the leading cause of food-borne illness in the UK, and how this pathogen responds to nitric oxide.

Irene is a senior lecturer at Queen's University Belfast

Simon Foster is professor of molecular microbiology and faculty director of research and innovation at the University of Sheffield.

Sally is professor in medical microbiology at the University of East London.

Power has contributed to Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Journal of Hospital Infection, European Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Journal of Clinical Pathology and Journal of Medical Microbiology.

Ian was divisional head, research dean (2001-2005 and 2012-2016) and is currently a member of the Lydia Becker Institute of Immunology and Inflammation.

Christine is chair in food microbiology, Faculty of Science, School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham

Peter was Curator of the NCIMB culture collection and head of microbiology services at NCIMB and served two terms on the SfAM Executive Committee.

Glenn Gibson is professor of food microbiology, head of Food Microbial Sciences. He co-coined the term ‘prebiotic’ in a paper in 1995 and continued to lead research in the field.

Jim McLauchlin was a lead public health microbiologist

Tom Humphrey did much of the research on salmonella and eggs in the 1980s and ‘90s and advised the British Egg Industry to vaccinate hens against salmonella in 1997, a major public health intervention.

Department of Microbiology, AFRC Institute of Food Research, Reading Laboratory, Shinfield, UK

Collinsella aerofaciens is a group of bacteria found in the gut and also on the surface of the tongue. It is named after the microbiologist Matthew Collins.