Laura Piddock joined the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) in January 2018. As GARDP’s Scientific Director, Laura leads the Discovery and Exploratory Research and Scientific Affairs programmes, including the REVIVE programme. She also contributes to GARDP’s Policy & Advocacy activities.

Since Laura started her PhD in 1982, she has been at the forefront of antimicrobial research. Laura began her career in a hospital and successfully integrated this background with academic research. She has published over 250 articles, six chapters in academic books and co-authored nine reports to the UK government or WHO. She has given over 200 lectures at international conferences. She has an H-index of 86. Laura is also Professor of Microbiology at the University of Birmingham, UK, where she leads a team whose research focuses on multidrug efflux (pumping of antibiotics out of the bacterial cell), regulation (switching on and off) of bacterial multidrug efflux pumps and discovery of efflux inhibitors.

Laura has been involved in various Policy activities. She was the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC) Chair in Public Engagement, and in this role was the Director of Antibiotic Action and led the secretariat of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Antibiotics from 2012 – 2017. Laura was a co-author of the first World Economic Forum report on AMR in 2013, and an expert adviser to the AMR review led by Lord Jim O’Neill.

Laura is an enthusiastic communicator about antibiotic resistance and the lack of new antibacterial treatments. She has given talks to various groups at local, national and international level. Laura frequently contributes to both the local, national and international media (print, radio, television and digital) and has been interviewed, advised on, and appeared in, several documentaries for numerous global networks including BBC (One, Two, Four, Radio 2, Radio 4, Radio 5 Live. World), Al Jazeera, CNN, Channel 4 and Sky News.