Dave Stuart

Professor David Stuart FRS is MRC Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford, and Head of the Division of Structural Biology at the Department of Clinical Medicine. He has also been Director of Life Sciences at Diamond since 2008. His principal research interests are particularly focused on virus-receptor interactions, basic puzzles of virus assembly and studying virus evolution. His team are studying several viral proteins and enzymes which are potential drug targets and/or illuminate how viruses modulate host responses. For example, the immune modulators of pox viruses.

He is a world leader in structural biology, distinguished by contributions to viral crystallography. Since his 1989 Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus structure he has extended the complexity of known structures with several milestone determinations; notably of bluetongue virus core and PRD1 (the first structure of an enveloped virus), providing the bedrock for advances in understanding viral assembly, replication and infection.

Dave Stuart has been seminal to the paradigm shift towards applying the technologies of ‘structural genomics’ to biomedical ends. When awarded an honorary degree in 2011 from the University of Leeds, the Chancellor, Lord Melvyn Bragg said, “Professor Dave Stuart is a highly productive and internationally distinguished structural biologist. He has a truly impressive research record and has been responsible for many important developments in the field of structural virology – in particular, determination of the structures of the causative agents of potentially devastating diseases of livestock: foot-and-mouth and bluetongue. These are, in fact, just two examples from an impressive list of ‘firsts’.”