PROFESSOR ALAN MCNALLY

Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection – MDS, University of Birmingham

Alan McNally is a Professor in Microbial Genomics and works on the evolutionary genomics of pathogenesis and antimicrobial resistance in bacterial pathogens. Alan has also been funded by the European Union, Medical Research Council and Royal Society. Alan has a strong belief in the collaborative nature of genomics research with active collaborations in the UK, China, Germany, France, Vietnam, and the US. During the COVID-19 outbreak, Alan was seconded to the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab as Infectious Disease lead at the Government’s first flagship COVID-19 testing facility. Launched on 9 April 2020, the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab was the first of three Government ‘mega-labs’ to be set-up across the UK, vastly increasing testing capacity and allowing tens of thousands more patient samples to be processed each day.

Alan McNally began his scientific career studying molecular microbiology at University of Glasgow, including a year’s placement at SmithKline Beecham in Hertfordshire. He then went on to do a PhD studying gene regulation in E. coli O157 with Prof David Gally at University of Edinburgh. A short post-doc in microbial biochemistry at Bristol was followed by two post-doctoral projects at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Surrey. It was here whilst working on H5N1 avian influenza that Alan developed an interest in phylogenetics and evolution, which he developed in his first academic PI position at Nottingham Trent University. During 10 successful years, Alan established his group as an internationally renowned group studying microbial genomics and evolution, leading to him joining the IMI in September 2016.