Prof. Mike Barrett

Mike Barrett is Professor of Biochemical Parasitology at the University of Glasgow. His work has focused on identifying drug modes of action against parasitic protozoa, particularly trypanosomes and leishmania, and how these parasites become resistant to drugs. He gained a PhD from the University of Cambridge and worked in Bordeaux and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine before establishing his own lab in Glasgow in 1996. He works with the World Health Organization as part of their expert committee on human African trypanosomiasis and has contributed to numerous projects aiming to develop novel compounds for use against the trypanosomiases and leishmaniases, including the Consortium of Parasitic Drug Development’s progression of pafuramidine into clinical trials for human African trypanosomiasis in the early 2000s.

Prof. Barrett is also Chair of the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance, and between 2010-2022 directed Glasgow Polyomics, a facility dedicated to collection and analysis of large datasets in genome sequencing, proteomics, and metabolomics. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 2021 was awarded an OBE for services to the National Health Service in response to the Covid-19 pandemic as part of the team that set up the Lighthouse laboratory in Glasgow, one of the UK’s national coronavirus testing labs.