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Stewart Cole, professeur ordinaire de pathogenèse microbienne à la Faculté des sciences de la vie (FSV)
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A Pioneer in Tuberculosis and Leprosy Genomes
14 December 2006
Stewart Cole leaves Paris for the EPFL
Stewart Cole, who was
until recently the Scientific Director of the Institut Pasteur, is joining the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is going to help create the Global Health
Institute, a centre that will use cutting-edge techniques to seek solutions to
tuberculosis, a growing threat worldwide.
The Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of
Technology announced today the appointment of
Stewart Cole as Full Professor of microbial pathogenesis at the School of Life
Sciences. A key figure at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, where he was
the Scientific Director, this 51-year-old professor, a native of Wales, will take up his post at
the Global Health Institute in the fall of 2007. The Institute's mission is
to understand dangerous infectious diseases such as AIDS, malaria and
tuberculosis so as to better treat and prevent them. Dr Cole is an
internationally known researcher who will focus on developing drugs, vaccines
and diagnostic tools, for which he already holds a number of patents as the
inventor or co-inventor, in particular tools for detecting antibiotic-resistant
bacteria.
Dr Cole's work on tuberculosis, leprosy, AIDS,
gas gangrene and bacterial molecular genetics is widely acclaimed throughout
the world. He was a leading member of the team of scientists who determined the
complete nucleotide sequence for the AIDS virus. He is also considered to be a
pioneer in the genomics of tuberculosis and leprosy bacilli.
At the EPFL, his obvious interest in drug discoveries
should create synergies with other areas such as biochemistry and computer
science. His arrival, along with that of another well-known specialist, John
McKinney of The Rockefeller University, marks the opening of a centre of
excellence devoted to tuberculosis. These appointments represent two different
but complementary approaches to the disease. The press release concerning John
McKinney's appointment is available at
http://actualites.epfl.ch/comm.
Dr Cole studied biology at the University of
Wales prior to earning his doctorate from the University of Sheffield in 1979.
Subsequently he embarked on a career as a researcher at the University of Umea
(Sweden) and the Max Planck Institut in Tuebingen (Germany), and then at the Institut Pasteur, where he was in turn a
senior research fellow, the head of the bacterial molecular genetics unit, a
professor, and finally the Director of Strategic Technologies from 2000 to
2004. Since that time, he has been the Institute's Scientific Director. Dr Cole
was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour for services rendered to science.