Laura is an internationally renowned scientist with great breadth and depth in the field of antibiotics; her career has focused entirely on these drugs for over 40 years, beginning in a hospital and successfully integrating this background with academic research. As Professor of Microbiology at the University of Birmingham, UK, Laura led an academic team researching the mechanisms of action and resistance to antibiotics and biocides.
She has researched mechanisms of action of antibiotics, molecular epidemiology and clinically relevant mechanisms of drug-resistance in bacteria isolated from patients, food, animals and the environment. As well as making seminal scientific advances to the field, Laura has made numerous methodological advances in these areas, including those to determine drug-resistance. Since 2012, her academic research has included drug discovery. She has also collaborated with and advised many pharmaceutical companies developing new antibiotics.
From 2018 to 2024 (nearly 7 years), Laura was the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP)’s Scientific Director. In that role, Laura led the Discovery and Exploratory Research and Scientific Affairs programmes, including the REVIVE programme. She also contributed to GARDP’s Policy & Advocacy activities and was a member of the GARDP Management team.
Laura has published widely in international peer reviewed journals (>200 original articles, >20 non-research policy original articles, 51 invited review articles, 21 research letters, 157 conference proceedings, 6 chapters in academic books). She contributed to nine reports and was an expert adviser to organizations such as the World Health Organization, the FDA and the UK VMD. Scientific data from her team has been used by national governmental agencies. Laura has given over 200 lectures at international conferences and has an H-index of 96.
Laura is an enthusiastic communicator about antibiotic resistance and the lack of new antibiotics. She has been interviewed by local, national and international media (print, radio, television and digital), and advised on and appeared in several documentaries for numerous global networks including BBC (One, Two, Four, Radio 2, Radio 4, Radio 5 Live), Al Jazeera, CNN, Channel 4 and Sky News. She is often quoted in scientific media including Nature and Science.
In 2001, Laura was awarded the prestigious Bristol-Myers Squibb unrestricted grant in infectious diseases of $500,000; the same year she was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. In 2006, Laura became the first woman President of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC). In 2017, she was appointed as a founding Fellow of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. From 2012 to 2017, Laura was the BSAC Chair in Public Engagement. Laura was the Chair of the EU Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPI-AMR) Scientific Advisory Committee 2017–2018. In 2019, Laura was awarded the Garrod Medal for her work on AMR.