Sharon Peacock

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Sharon Peacock

CBE FMedSci MRCP
Born
Sharon Jayne Hardstaffe

(1959-03-24) 24 March 1959 (age 62)
Alma materUniversity of Southampton (BM)
Open University (PhD)
Spouse(s)
Peter Peacock
​
(m. 1983)​
[1]
Childrenone s two d[1]
Awards
  • EMBO Member (2015)[2]
  • MRCPath (1997)
Scientific career
FieldsPathogens
Genomics
Clinical practice
Public health[3]
Institutions
ThesisStaphylococcal fibronectin-binding proteins (2003)
Websiteprofessorsharonpeacock.co.uk Edit this at Wikidata

Sharon Jayne Peacock CBE FMedSci MRCP (born 24 March 1959)[1] is a British microbiologist who is Professor of Public Health and Microbiology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge.[3][4] She is known for her work on the use of microbial whole genome sequencing in diagnostic and public health microbiology, particularly on the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei and on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

She has held senior positions at Public Health England since 2019, and in 2020 helped to establish and then lead the COG-UK consortium, which provides genomic sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Education[]

Having failed her eleven-plus (11+) exam, Peacock left school aged 16 to work in a shop. She then became a dental nurse, and entered formal training as a nurse. She eventually[when?] enrolled at the University of Southampton, and graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine (BM) degree in 1988.[1] Following this, she did four years of postgraduate training in London, Brighton, and Oxford, during which she obtained Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians (MRCP).[5] She was awarded a Wellcome Trust research training fellowship in microbiology in 1995, and subsequent training in clinical microbiology led to Peacock obtaining membership of the Royal College of Pathologists (MRCPath) in 1997.[1] During this Fellowship, Peacock was awarded a PhD in 2003 from the Open University for her work on fibronectin-binding proteins in the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus.[6]

Career and research[]

Peacock's work is particularly focused upon developing diagnostic and public health innovations from genome sequencing technologies.[3][4][7]

From 1998, Peacock worked as senior lecturer in clinical microbiology at the University of Oxford. In 2002 she went to Thailand on a Wellcome Trust Career Development Award, and remained there until 2009. During this time, she began collaboration with teams at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and became head of bacterial diseases research at the Wellcome Trust Major Overseas Programme in Bangkok.[8]

On returning to the UK, Peacock became Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Cambridge, heading the Peacock Lab.[9] She also took up honorary consultant positions with the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust and the Health Protection Agency, a public body advising on protecting public health. She maintained a research programme in Thailand, working on the molecular epidemiology of Leptospira, infection mechanisms of Burkholderia pseudomallei and melioidosis.[8] Peacock has published around 150 papers on these topics.[10]

Peacock led a working group for the Department of Health's 100,000 genome project and in 2017 contributed to the UK Chief Medical Officer's annual report on antimicrobial resistance.[11][12]

In 2015, Peacock was appointed the founding director of the Bloomsbury Research Institute, a £50 million research facility intended to investigate new treatments, vaccines, and methods of diagnosing, preventing, and controlling diseases.[11]

Large-scale research conducted by Peacock involved studies of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and in 2017 her study into the superbug was published in Science Translational Medicine.[13][14] She continues to research pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and multidrug resistant bacilli, and to conduct studies aimed at identifying reservoirs of antimicrobial resistance.[7][15][16][17]

In 2019, her position at Cambridge changed to Professor of Public Health and Microbiology.[18] Towards the end of that year she was appointed Director of the National Infection Service,[19] a department of Public Health England (PHE) which operates laboratories working on bacterial infections and antibiotic resistance.[20] By 2020 Peacock was seconded to the position of Director of Science at PHE, and was a member of PHE's management committee.[21] She is the Director of the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK), established in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to collaborate on whole genome sequencing of the virus.[22][23]

Peacock's research has been funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Department of Health and the Wellcome Trust.[15][dead link]

Honours and awards[]

Peacock was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci)[7] and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology[24] in 2013.

Peacock was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to medical microbiology.[25] In the same year, she was named in the BioBeat 50 Movers and Shakers in Biobusiness report.[26] She received a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) senior investigator award in 2017.[27]

Peacock was awarded the Unilever Colworth Prize in 2018 [28] in recognition of her work in microbiology.[13]

Peacock has given numerous named lectures, including The Tony Hart Memorial Lecture (2014) at the University of Liverpool, the Ruysch lecture (2014) at the Amsterdam Medical Centre, the McAuley Oration in International Health (2015) at the University of Otago, New Zealand,[29] the Linacre Lecture (2015) at St John's College, Cambridge,[30] the Emmanuelle Caron Memorial Lecture (2016) at Imperial College London,[31] the Jenner Lecture (2017) at St George's, University of London, the Macfarlane Burnet prize lecture (2019) at the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases,[32] the Ker Memorial Lecture (2019) at the University of Edinburgh,[33] and the Sir Anthony Epstein Lecture (2019) at the University of Bristol.[34]

She was awarded membership of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2015.[2]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d e Anon (2020). "Peacock, Sharon Jayne". Who's Who. ukwhoswho.com (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U250669. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b "Find people in the EMBO Communities".
  3. ^ a b c Sharon Peacock publications indexed by Google Scholar Edit this at Wikidata
  4. ^ a b Sharon Peacock publications from Europe PubMed Central
  5. ^ "Professor Sharon Peacock Non-executive Director". cuh.nhs.uk. Cambridge University Hospitals. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  6. ^ Peacock, Sharon Jayne (2003). Staphylococcal fibronectin-binding proteins. open.ac.uk (PhD thesis). Open University. doi:10.21954/ou.ro.0000f737. OCLC 59268794. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.275055.
  7. ^ a b c "Professor Sharon Peacock". acmedsci.ac.uk. The Academy of Medical Sciences. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  8. ^ a b "Sharon Peacock". sanger.ac.uk. Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  9. ^ "Professor Peacock's Group". med.cam.ac.uk. University of Cambridge. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  10. ^ "Professor Sharon Peacock". BMC blog network. BioMed Central. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  11. ^ a b "Sharon Peacock CBE appointed Director of the Bloomsbury Research Institute". ucl.ac.uk. UCL. 12 March 2015. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  12. ^ "Chief Medical Officer's fifth annual report (advocacy volume) on genomics highlights the potential for pathogen genomics in patient diagnosis and infection control". On Medicine. BioMed Council. 6 July 2017. Retrieved 30 November 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  13. ^ a b "Double recognition for microbiologist". ITV News. ITV. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  14. ^ "MRSA: Routinemäßige Genomanalysen können unerwartete Ausbrüche..." Ärzteblatt (in German). Ärzteblatt. 1 November 2017. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  15. ^ a b "Sharon Peacock". ucl.ac.uk. UCL. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  16. ^ "Genomic data may help reveal hidden MRSA outbreaks". CIDRAP. University of Minnesota. 25 October 2017. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  17. ^ Gallagher, James (26 October 2017). "Superbug 'sleuthing' finds secret outbreaks". BBC News. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  18. ^ "Alumni Innovators: Professor Sharon Peacock CBE". London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. 24 October 2019. Retrieved 24 February 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  19. ^ "Professor Sharon Peacock CBE". GOV.UK. Retrieved 23 December 2020.
  20. ^ "Bacteriology Reference Department user manual" (PDF). GOV.UK. Public Health England. October 2020. Retrieved 23 December 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. ^ "Leadership chart" (PDF). GOV.UK. Public Health England. July 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
  22. ^ "Who We Are". COG-UK Consortium. Retrieved 23 December 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  23. ^ "UK launches whole genome sequence alliance to map spread of coronavirus". COG-UK Consortium. 23 March 2020. Retrieved 23 December 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  24. ^ "Prof. Sharon Peacock has been elected as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO)". cam.ac.uk. University of Cambridge. 18 May 2015. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  25. ^ "Sharon Peacock". cam.ac.uk. University of Cambridge. 6 January 2015. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  26. ^ "Johnian announced as one of top female bio-entrepreneurs in UK". joh.cam.ac.uk. St John's College Cambridge. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  27. ^ "NIHR 2017 Senior Investigators announced". uclhospitals.brc.nihr.ac.uk. UCL NIHR Biomedical Research Centre. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  28. ^ "Unilever Colworth Prize 2018: Professor Sharon Peacock". microbiologysociety.org. Microbiology Society. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  29. ^ "Archive of Otago Global Health Institute Annual Conferences". otago.ac.nz. Otago Global Health Institute. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  30. ^ "Linacre Lecture". joh.cam.ac.uk. St John's College. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  31. ^ "The Emmanuelle Caron Lecture". imperial.ac.uk. Imperial College. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  32. ^ "Macfarlane Burnet Oration". asid.net.au. Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  33. ^ "2019 Edinburgh Infectious Diseases Annual Symposium". ed.ac.uk. University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  34. ^ "CMM Annual 'Sir Anthony Epstein' Lecture Symposium". bristol.ac.uk. University of Bristol. Retrieved 24 October 2020.


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