Mike Turner

Professor Mike Turner is a consultant currently working for the Neglected Tropical Diseases department of the WHO in their snakebite initiative. He is Honorary Professor at University of Glasgow UK, a member of the council at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and on the Science Advisory Board at the Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. He is a former Director of Science and a member of the Senior Executive team at Wellcome, Europe’s largest biomedical research foundation. He joined Wellcome in 2014 as Head of Infection and Immunobiology and led on a number of portfolios including funding responses to emerging viral diseases – Ebola, Zika, Yellow Fever, and Covid19.

Approximately three-quarters of the science funded by Wellcome is based in the UK but Mike had particular responsibilities for Wellcome’s funding in Africa, India and SE Asia as well. Before joining Wellcome he was at the University of Glasgow where he held Beit, Royal Society, and Leverhulme Fellowships. Latterly, he became a Professor of Parasitology and held a number of managerial roles, including as Head of Division. His research interests focused on the trypanosome parasites that cause African sleeping sickness in humans and Nagana in livestock, the genomics of malaria parasites, and the immunoepidemiology of schistosomes.