Prof John Wain

Biography

My career to date has involved clinical, public health, academic and company-based microbiology in the UK, Nigeria and Vietnam.
I trained as a graduate biologist in The Public Health Laboratory Service in the UK and went on to design and deliver teaching programmes for public health and clinical microbiologists in Nigeria, and setup a microbiology research laboratory in Vietnam.

As a faculty member at the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge UK – my group developed a transposon mutagenesis technique known as TraDIS as part of an AMR research programme and I then directed for three years PHE’s Gastrointestinal Reference Laboratory at Colindale; during this time, I was responsible for the validation of whole genome sequencing of bacterial isolates for outbreak investigation. I have taken two drug discovery companies from start-up to exit, I am a founding editor for the Journal of Infection in Developing Countries and am co-founder for a charity supporting scientists in developing countries: JIDCuk Charitable Trust.

My current post, at the Quadram Institute, UK is focused on transnational research – including the development of metabolic models for bacterial communities. I have supervised 10 PhD students to completion, my first defined the multi locus typing (MLST) scheme for Salmonella and my most recent has developed a next generation transposon mutagenesis technique (exponential mutagenesis).