Prof Ross J Fitzgerald

Ross Fitzgerald is Professor of Molecular Bacteriology at The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh and Group Leader of LBEP. After completing a PhD in Trinity College, Dublin with Cyril Smyth on the population genetics of the major human and veterinary pathogen Staphylococcus aureus, he carried out post-doctoral studies on S. aureus evolutionary genomics in the NIH, USA with Jim Musser, and on the role of surface proteins in S. aureus pathogenesis with Tim Foster in Dublin. He was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Edinburgh in 2004 and established the Laboratory for Bacterial Evolution and Pathogenesis (LBEP) which investigates the biology of clinically important species of staphylococci. In particular, his group combines molecular microbiology and comparative genomic approaches to track S. aureus evolution and the molecular basis of S. aureus pathogenesis of humans and animals. He is using similar approaches to investigate the genome biology and epidemiology of Legionnaires’ disease. A major goal is the translation of fundamental discoveries into novel approaches to controlling infectious disease.