Nicola Stonehouse

I am a virologist, interested in both the fundamental aspects of the viral lifecycle and the development of novel vaccines. While a post-doctoral fellow, an interest in perusing high-resolution structural studies of RNA-protein complexes led to a long-term collaboration with Lars Liljas’ group in Uppsala, Sweden and ultimately led to the award of a Career Development Fellowship from the UK Medical Research Council. Over time, I moved from working on bacteriophage to picornaviruses and was appointed as Lecturer in 2001 and to Chair in Molecular Virology in 2014.

I collaborate widely and my current funding supports vaccine development, studies of the replication of foot-and-mouth disease virus and understanding the fundamental aspects of viral capsid assembly. The vaccine projects involve studies to generate a generic vaccine ‘scaffold’ and the development and characterisation of stabilised empty viral capsids as vaccine candidates for poliovirus and other enteroviruses.

I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce (FRSA) and the UK Higher Education Academy.