ProfessorJason Micklefield

Jason Micklefield is a Chemical Biologist and a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London. His research involves the discovery, characterisation and engineering of biosynthetic pathways to new bioactive natural products, particularly antibiotics. He is also interested in the discovery, structure, mechanism and engineering of enzymes for synthetic applications, including the integration of enzymes with chemocatalysis for telescoping routes to pharmaceuticals and other valuable products.

Micklefield earned a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1993 working with Professor Sir Alan Battersby to complete the first total synthesis of haem d1, a coenzyme in bacteria. Following his PhD, Micklefield was awarded a NATO fellowship to work on enzyme mechanisms and biosynthesis with Professor Heinz G. Floss at the University of Washington, Seattle USA. In 1995, Micklefield was appointed Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at Birkbeck College, University of London, before moving to Manchester in 1998. He was promoted to Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Manchester in 2008 where his research group was based in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology(MIB). Micklefield was also a visiting professor at the East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST) in Shanghai. He served as co-director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Integrated Catalysis (iCAT) and as Director of the BBSRC Natural Product Discovery and Bioengineering Network (NPRONET). Micklefield was the recipient of the RSC Interdisciplinary Prize (2022), Bader Award (2019), Natural Product Reports (NPR) Lecture Award (2008). He also received a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced grant and his lab also won the RSC Horizon Prize & Rita and John Cornforth Award (2023). In 2024, Micklefield moved to Imperial College London, where his research group is based in the Molecular Science Research Hub (MSRH).

For further information see our group web site: https://www.micklefieldlab.chemistry.manchester.ac.uk