2024 Honorary Fellowship Nominations
We are thrilled to announce that this year we've received an unprecedented number of outstanding nominations for the Honorary Fellowship at Applied Microbiology International. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated in the nomination process. Your engagement is crucial in helping us recognise and honour excellence within our community.
Voting is open to members only.
The voting form will appear below for logged in AMI members, and short biographies for each of the nominees can be found at the bottom of the page. The winner will be announced at our AGM on Thursday 18 July 2024.
You can find out more about each of our nominees below.
Alexandre S. Rosado
Professor of Bioscience KAUST, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology - Professor Rosado is an environmental microbiologist specialized in Basic and Applied Microbiology, Synthetic microbial communities, Microbiome Science, Microbiome Manipulation and Microbiology of Extreme Environments (source of new biotechnological products).
Iruka Okeke
Iruka N. Okeke, Ph.D., is professor of pharmaceutical microbiology and a Calestous Juma Science Leadership fellow at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her research group uses microbiology, genetic and genomic methods to investigate the mechanisms bacteria use to colonize humans, cause disease and gain drug resistance.
She also studies laboratory practice in Africa, and her group contributes to antimicrobial resistance surveillance in Nigeria.
Kenneth H. Nealson
A microbiologist who pioneered the fields of bioluminescence, electrogenic microbes (his group discovered iron reduction by Shewanella), microbial fuel cells, astrobiology, geomicrobiology, and many others. He is a champion of early career scientists, supporting many careers through his mentorship and promoting the work of others.
Matthew Henn
Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Seres. USA. Led one of the first companies to have the first FDA approved microbiome therapy.
Bob Metcalf
Bob Metcalf is a Professor Emeritus at California State University, Sacramento, where he taught microbiology courses for over 40 years.
His expertise in solar cooking enabled him to travel to low-income countries to demonstrate that with sunshine and a simple solar cooker, there is an alternative to fire for cooking. He also demonstrated that contaminated water could be pasteurized when heated to 65°C using solar or fire to heat water.
Kenneth N. Timmis
Professor Kenneth Timmis is a renowned microbiologist known for his contributions to environmental microbiology, biotechnology, and microbial ecology. He has made significant advancements in understanding microbial communities and their applications in environmental remediation, bioremediation, and industrial processes. His research has focused on how microorganisms interact with their environments, their genetic adaptability, and their potential for sustainable applications in biotechnology and environmental protection.
Pascale Cossart
Emeritus Professor at the Pasteur Institute - Pascale’s research revolutionised our understanding of Listeria monocytogenes as a food borne pathogen, and then her work progressed to using this bacterium as a tool to investigate bacteria-host cell interactions, and then moved on to using Listeria as a tool to dissect how human cells function. She has led the field since the mid 1980’s and was responsible for many innovations in the study of bacterial pathogens that have had wider impact beyond just the study of just this one organism.
Eran Segal
A professor at the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS), heading a lab with a multi-disciplinary team of computational biologists and experimental scientists in the area of computational and systems biology. His group has extensive experience in machine learning, computational biology, and analysis of heterogeneous high-throughput genomic data.
He was elected as an EMBO member and as a member of the young Israeli academy of science. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Segal developed models for analyzing the dynamics of the pandemic and served as an advisor to the government of Israel.
Chikwe Ihekweazu
Assistant Director-General for Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems, is an epidemiologist, public health physician and the World Health Organization's Assistant Director-General for Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems.
Steve Giovannoni
Dr Giovannoni founded Oregon State University's HTCL, which pioneered automated methods for isolating and studying the elusive microbes that often dominate natural ecosystems. His research team developed SAR11 cell culture as a model system for studying the oceanic carbon cycle and streamlining, a path to minimal complexity in microbial cell architecture. His research also focuses on the role of SAR202 marine bacteria in ocean carbon sequestration, and biochemical mechanisms of ocean deoxygenation.
Clifford Houston
First African American president of the American Society of Microbiology, Presidential Award in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (2000), former Chair of the ABRCMS steering and planning committee. Presently, Clifford is a Herman Barnett Distinguished Professor as well as the Associate Vice President for Educational Outreach and Diversity for the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).
Rita R. Colwell
Distinguished Professor at the University of Maryland and Founder/Chair of CosmosID, Dr. Rita Colwell has made significant contributions to microbiology, public health, and environmental science. Her pioneering research on cholera, focusing on its survival in aquatic environments, has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of how the disease spreads. Rita also served as the Director of the National Science Foundation from 1998 to 2004, becoming its first female Director, and has been awarded 62 honorary degrees from institutions of higher education, including her alma mater, Purdue University.
Jeff Gordon
Washington University, USA - ‘grandfather of microbiome research’ - internationally known for his research on gastrointestinal development and how gut microbial communities affect normal intestinal function, shape various aspects of human physiology including our nutritional status, and affect predisposition to diseases.
Mark Willcox
UNSW, Australia a medical microbiologist who has worked for many years in the area of infections of medical devices. Mark’s laboratory focuses on development of novel antimicrobials that have applications as antibiotics and disinfectants. It also develops new antimicrobial coatings that can be used for a variety of purposes, including coating of medical devices to reduce associated infections
Jo Handelsman
U Wisconsin, USA - Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Vilas Research Professor, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. She previously served as a science advisor to President Barack Obama as the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), she is also widely recognized for her contributions to science education and diversity in science.
Peter Hotez
Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, United States. Previous president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and a founding Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is also the co-director of Parasites Without Borders, a global nonprofit organization with a focus on those suffering from parasitic diseases in subtropical environments.
Katalin Kariko
Szeged University, Szeged, Hungary; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA – a biochemist who specializes in ribonucleic acid (RNA)-mediated mechanisms, she laid the scientific groundwork for mRNA vaccines. She received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023 for her work on the COVID-19 vaccine, along with American immunologist Drew Weissman.
Haiyan Chu
Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences - global leader in soil microbiology. Dr. Chu’s research interests are soil microbial ecology, microbial biogeography and metagenomics. He has widely investigated microbial large-scale spatial distributions in various ecosystems, and identified the relative importance of contemporary environmental conditions and historical factors structuring microbial distribution.
Rodney Donlan
Former team leader for the Biofilm Laboratory in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.