Dr Leo James

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge.

​Leo is a biophysicist and crystallographer with whom we take a structure function approach to our favourite biological questions.

Prof Richard Milne

Institute of Immunobiology Infection, QMUL.

Richard leads immunobiology and infection teaching at QMUL and is recipient of numerous teaching awards. Together with Greg and the Towers lab, he is developing a research-led teaching programme in which senior investigators and post-docs teach undergraduate lectures based on their most recent and exciting discoveries. We aim not only to teach science facts but also to teach students how to think like scientists. Richard and Greg run a London-wide monthly seminar programme: Virtual Virology, and a public engagement programme for school children.

Prof Richard Goldstein

Division of Infection and Immunity, UCL.

​Richard is an computational biologist in our Dept at UCL who studies virus and host evolution. We believe that biological data make most sense when considered in the context of evolution. In collaboration with Richard we consider ways to ask questions that combine evolutionary and molecular biology experimental approaches.

Prof Clare Jolly

Institute of Immunobiology Infection, QMUL.

Clare is a cell biologist aiming to understand how HIV-1 transmits from one cell to another. We share lab meetings with Clare and Clare's group have a big input on interpretation of observations made in the lab. We find having more than one PI in the lab meeting is really helpful for discussion and interpretation of new data.

Dr Michela Mazzon

Virology Research Services Ltd

​Whenever we have a technical question or want to grow a new virus we call Michela

Dr Waseem Qasim

UCL Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital.

​Greg did his PhD in a gene therapy lab (advisor Mary Collins) and so we keep an eye on how gene therapy is developing and how we can chip in. For example we have invented an inhibitor of innate immunity that rescues infectivity of HIV based lentivectors on human stem cells. Wassem advises on all matters T-cell gene therapy. See our paper 'A modified cyclosporine enhances lentivector transduction ex vivo and in vivo by degrading IFITM3.'

Che Colpitts

Queens University, Ontario, Canada.

Che spent three years as a research fellow with us funded by Canadian fellowships and a grant from the UCL/UCLH Biomedical Research Centre. Che taught us how to work on flaviviruses with a focus on Hepatitis C (HCV). Che worked out that if you inhibit HCV with cyclosporines then the antiviral protein PKR is activated to provide activiral acivity via IRF1 published in eLife. Che now helps us understand how innate immunity works against Dengue Virus funded by an MRC project grant co-written with Che. We were sorry to see Che go but very happy to see her success in setting up and funding her own lab at Queens University in Canada.

David Jaques

Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales.

David is a structural biologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia. We work with David to understand how lentiviral capsids work and how they regulate encapsidated viral DNA synthesis.

Rob Gifford

​Rob is a computational biologist working at the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation at Stellenbosch University, Western Cape, South Africa. His insight into viral evolution has helped us understand viral protein function and we now argue that no host-virus interactions can make sense unless considered through the lens of evolution.

Steve Gschmeissner

EM photographer.

Steve is a photographer who uses a scanning electron microscope to take pictures. We collaborate with Steve by providing infection related samples for him to photograph. We think Steve has taken the best SEM pictures of viruses available Check them out on his website  http://theworldcloseup.com

Wendy Barclay

Regius Professor of Infectious Disease, Department of Infectious Disease - Imperial College London

​Wendy is the Principal Investigator on the UKRI funded Genotype to Phenotype SARS-CoV-2 consortium (G2P2) and Greg is a co-applicant. This grant brings together many SARS-CoV-2 labs across the UK together to understand SARS-CoV-2 biology and COVID19 disease mechanisms. We also study SARS-CoV-2 evolution, seeking to predict what will happen next with this virus as it adapts to humans and we adapt to it.

Peijun Zhang

Professor of Structural Biology, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford

Peijun holds a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award entitled "Resolving HIV-1 transport and host cofactor regulation in the cellular context” on which Greg is a co-applicant. This grant facilitates collaboration between our labs combining Peijun’s state of the art structural biology with our molecular and evolutionary approaches aiming to understand how HIV works in ever greater detail. 

John Walter

Dr ​ John Walter is an artist and academic working in a diverse range of media that includes drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, digital imaging, video, performance and installation. His PhD 'Alien Sex Club:  Educating audiences about continuing rates of HIV transmission using art and design' addressed​ ​HIV as a crisis of representation for visual art. ​He won the Hayward Curatorial Open in 2016 for 'Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness', which toured from The MAC Belfast to DCA Dundee and Bury Art Gallery and Sculpture Centre. His collaboration with Greg Towers on 'CAPSID' is supported by a Wellcome Trust Large Arts Award. His work as artist in residence in the lab has resulted in over 250 artworks, which form an exhibition at CGP London and HOME Manchester along with a monograph published by HOME.

Giorgia Santilli

We collaborate with Giorgia to develop our gene therapy transduction enhancer. Our inhibitor BG147 inhibits IFITM3 to rescue infectivity of HIV based lentivectors on human stem cells and in subretinal cells in the eye for in vivo gene therapy. Giorgia’s expertise in gene therapy and human stem cells is invaluable in this work and her lab perform all the primary stem cell work. See our paper 'A modified cyclosporine enhances lentivector transduction ex vivo and in vivo by degrading IFITM3.'

Adam Fletcher

Adam studied for his PhD with us graduating in 2012. Since then he has learned structural and chemical biology which he combines with molecular biology to study host responses to infection focused on changes in ubiquitination. Adam now has his own laboratory at the Glasgow Centre for Virus Research and we collaborate with Adam to understand how ubiquitin dependent events dictate innate immune responses and infection outcome. 

Joe Grove

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