Emeritus ProfessorMurray Selkirk

Murray Selkirk earned his PhD at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, where he studied immunosuppression in murine trypanosomiasis with Bridget Ogilvie. He then joined the University of Washington, Seattle, working with Nina Agabian on antigenic variation in trypanosomes, and after a brief spell at the Naval Biosciences Laboratory in Oakland, joined Rick Maizels at Imperial College to work on parasitic nematodes. He was appointed to a Lectureship in the Department of Biochemistry in 1986, promoted to Professor in 2001, was Head of the Division of Cell & Molecular Biology from 2005-2008, Head of the Department of Life Sciences from 2011-2017, and is currently Emeritus Professor of Molecular Parasitology. His research has focused largely on gastrointestinal nematode parasites, aiming to understand how these pathogens effect long-term survival in mammalian hosts, with a particular focus on molecular mechanisms underlying regulation of the host immune system and resistance to immunity.