Leading Light: Professor Sir David Stuart

Our fourth Leading light is Professor Sir David Stuart, Director of Life Sciences at Diamond, a position he has held since 2008. He 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.

David is a world leader in structural biology and has been recognised for his contributions to viral crystallography, in particular for determining the structure of a significant number of virus structures.

These have ranged from picornaviruses, which include a number of important animal and human pathogens (foot-and-mouth-disease virus, hand-foot-and-mouth disease viruses and hepatitis A virus) to the larger dsRNA viruses (Bluetongue virus). His research has also extended to work on drug discovery projects for HIV-1 and Ebola. More recently, David led a project to develop methods for the production of viral proteins for drug screening and structural analysis, which has led to understanding how anti-viral drugs can work against SARSCoV-2 (the virus responsible for COVID-19).  

David is a fellow at the Royal Society, has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, and was knighted in the 2021 for services to medical research and the scientific community.