Professor Julian Rayner, whose research at the Wellcome Sanger Institute has made significant contributions to our understanding of malaria parasites, will take over as Director of the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research (CIMR) on 1 May 2019.
The CIMR is one of the flagship non-clinical research facilities on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. It brings together clinicians and non-clinical researchers in a mutually productive partnership, using cell biology to understand the cellular basis of disease, and studying genetic disease to reveal crucial mechanisms of cell biology.
Julian will be the fourth Director of the Institute, succeeding Professor Gillian Griffiths. He has also been elected to the Chair of Cell Biology in the School of Clinical Medicine.
Julian’s research helps to identify new malaria drug and vaccine targets by investigating the interactions between Plasmodium parasites – the organism that causes malaria – and human red blood cells. After undergraduate education in New Zealand and a PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, he began working on malaria cell biology as a postdoctoral fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, followed by his first faculty position at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Since 2008 he has been a Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, during which time he and collaborators have identified an essential protein complex involved in the invasion of red blood cells by malaria parasites. This is now in early stage human vaccine testing. They have also traced the origins of human malaria parasites in African apes, and carried out the first ever genome-scale genetic screenings in Plasmodium parasites, helping to identify new targets for drug development.
At the Sanger Institute, Julian was Director of Graduate Studies from 2012 to 2014 and since 2014 has been Director of Wellcome Genome Campus Connecting Science, a multidisciplinary training and engagement programme which aims to enable everyone to explore genomics and its impact on research, health and society. He is strongly committed to public engagement and will maintain his role with Connecting Science while at CIMR, helping to forge even stronger links between the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Genome Campus.
Julian said: “I’m honoured and excited to take over the leadership of CIMR. The Institute has played a very significant role in the Cambridge research landscape over the past twenty years, and its list of current and past group leaders includes some of the most impactful names in UK cell biology research.
“I’m privileged to follow in the footsteps of Professors Gillian Griffiths and Paul Luzio, and there is particular resonance in bringing parasite cell biology back to CIMR, echoing the work of our first Director, Professor Jennie Blackwell. I look forward to working with the amazing staff to help shape the next stages in CIMR history, and building an even more diverse, inclusive, engaged and scientifically outstanding research institute.”
Patrick Maxwell, Regius Professor of Physic and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine, said: “I am absolutely delighted to welcome Julian Rayner as Director of CIMR. The Institute includes an impressive array of world-class investigators, and has been a key driver of research programs across the whole of the School. Julian is just the right person to build on CIMR’s impressive track record and exploit the extraordinary opportunities at the intersection of human disease, genomics and cell biology.”